Together, We Light the Way

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4. What Is Sin?

1. Sin is insanity. ²It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth. ³And being mad, it sees illusions where the truth should be, and where it really is. ⁴Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold? ⁵What need have they of sights or sounds or touch? ⁶What would they hear or reach to grasp? ⁷What would they sense at all? ⁸To sense is not to know. ⁹And truth can be but filled with knowledge, and with nothing else.

Right off Jesus tells us that we are all nuts. Haha. If we believe in sin, and we do or we wouldn’t be here, our mind has been driven mad as it looks for illusions to take the place of the truth. I see that this is true. We deliberately choose to dream rather than to live, and to dream of pain and suffering. Then we dream of death. Each time I choose to see someone as guilty, I am using the belief in sin to deny truth and to convince myself that my preferred illusion is what I want instead of my reality. Does that sound crazy? Yep, I think so. I also see that he is telling us that making a body for the sensory feedback it provides doesn’t make sense. We already know all there is to know. Why do we think we need these senses?

2. The body is the instrument the mind made in its efforts to deceive itself. ²Its purpose is to strive. ³Yet can the goal of striving change. ⁴And now the body serves a different aim for striving. ⁵What it seeks for now is chosen by the aim the mind has taken as replacement for the goal of self-deception. ⁶Truth can be its aim as well as lies. ⁷The senses then will seek instead for witnesses to what is true.

The body was made for this deception, to convince us that we don’t know, and that the body can help us discover what we don’t know. The Holy Spirit has a different use for the body. Truth can be its aim now as we use the senses to seek for witnesses to what is true. The Holy Spirit makes use of all we make to dream. He uses it to awaken us.

3. Sin is the home of all illusions, which but stand for things imagined, issuing from thoughts that are untrue. ²They are the “proof” that what has no reality is real. ³Sin “proves” God’s Son is evil; timelessness must have an end; eternal life must die. ⁴And God Himself has lost the Son He loves, with but corruption to complete Himself, His Will forever overcome by death, love slain by hate, and peace to be no more.

Jesus tells us in a few strong words why we want have guilt and why we want to wake up. Believing in sin and imagining that sin is real seems to undo reality. It seems to prove that God’s Son is evil and that we have undone God Himself. As I contemplate this, I recognize how I do this. Each time I use the body’s senses to prove that someone is guilty of abandoning or rejecting me, I prove how vulnerable I am. I prove I can be hurt and that my brother who must be separate from me is capable of hurting me. Did God create me weak and vulnerable, or did I undo God’s creation?

Either way, it is a frightening idea. I suppose the fear of discovering the answer is so strong that I would rather try to find a way to navigate my dream world that is less painful than to try to awaken from it. If my fear of God has any truth, I would not be willing to take the chance of discovering it is so. There doesn’t seem to be any way out of this nightmare and so I continue to look outward for proof it is my brother who is the guilty one and I am just the innocent victim.

4. A madman’s dreams are frightening, and sin appears indeed to terrify. ²And yet what sin perceives is but a childish game. ³The Son of God may play he has become a body, prey to evil and to guilt, with but a little life that ends in death. ⁴But all the while his Father shines on him, and loves him with an everlasting Love which his pretenses cannot change at all.
5. How long, O Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin? ²Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children’s toys? ³How soon will you be ready to come home? ⁴Perhaps today? ⁵There is no sin. ⁶Creation is unchanged. ⁷Would you still hold return to Heaven back? ⁸How long, O holy Son of God, how long?

Ah! There is a way out of the maze of sin and guilt that ultimately ends in death only to be repeated over and over. As I continue to release the belief in sin everywhere I imagine I see it, my mind begins to clear. I start to see what these fearful images have obscured. I glimpse my reality and discover to my happy amazement that everyone else is as brilliantly beautiful as am I.
Doesn’t this make more sense than what we believed before, that God could have created us badly or that we have the power to change creation? The process of forgiving our illusions and letting them go convince us that there is no sin and creation remains unchanged. Now each time I become so confused that I look for proof of sin, I remember this refrain: How long, O Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin? Not a minute more!

© 2021, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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3. What Is the World?

1. The world is false perception. ²It is born of error, and it has not left its source. ³It will remain no longer than the thought that gave it birth is cherished. ⁴When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear and all its errors vanish. ⁵Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well.
2. The world was made as an attack on God. ²It symbolizes fear. ³And what is fear except love’s absence? ⁴Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him. ⁵Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. ⁶But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely. ⁷Now mistakes become quite possible, for certainty has gone.

How the World Came to Be
This is exciting! We are going to learn more about the world we seem to be living in and sometimes seem to be victim to. Right off, Jesus gives us a very important bit of information. He says that the world is a false perception. A perception is a way of seeing something. It is the ability to become aware of something through the senses. It is not the truth, not reality. This is why we made bodies with senses, so that we could use them to perceive what it is we want to experience.

This is also why you might perceive a political situation in one way and your neighbor perceive the situation in an entirely different way. Perception is how you choose to understand something. When we become fixated on our particular perception we become confused and think it is fact. We do this kind of thing all the time and it is the source of some very serious conflicts.

So, we know what perception is and how it works. Since everyone has changed their minds about how they perceived something, we know it is not fixed. That is another way we know that perception is not Reality, not Creation. What is created does not change and does not end. Jesus also says this about the world. It is a false perception. If we believe this world is real, we are mistaken because it is just a false perception.

Jesus goes on to give us more valuable information. He says that the world was borne of error. Simply stated, we made a mistake and this mistake led to the false perception of a world. He further states that it has not left its source. So, we had an idea of what we wanted to experience. We then made bodies with senses that would report to us the experience we sought. With this information, we falsely perceived a world in which to have our experience. We became fixated on our false perception to the exclusion of truth. All this began with a thought and is only a thought given form in our minds and that is where it has stayed until we change our mind. It has not left its source.

Seeing the World Differently
Jesus is telling us that the world remains because we want it. It will remain as long as we cherish it. No, wait, that is not what he is saying. This is more accurate: It will remain as long as the thought that gave birth to it is cherished. A thought made the world and that thought remains in our mind because we want it, we cherish it, and the world will appear to exist until we decide differently.

I tell you the truth, I feel like I am truly done with the world, but evidently, I am not. I still believe in it even as I do not believe in it. Split mind, anyone? I’m not alone in this, of course. I ask myself what is it that we cherish about the world and I wish I could tell you it’s the beauty of nature and the heartening generosity of strangers. Or maybe the magnificence of some extraordinary achievements of mankind. But I don’t think that is it. None of that excites me any longer, and even if it does for others, could Heaven offer less? There is the love we feel for each other but we don’t need a world for that.

Then Why Do We Keep Up This Farse?
I suspect that we cling to the world for some pretty ridiculous ideas. We have become very used to it for one thing. We are accustomed to seeing ourselves in these limiting containers we call bodies. It feels strange and even a little scary to think of not being in one. We have become accustomed to thinking of them as protective and that is just crazy since they are fragile and vulnerable and are absolutely destined to die.

It is such a senseless idea that I don’t allow myself to think of it much and when I do, I ask the Holy Spirit to look with me and dissolve that error. There is also the fear of the unknown. We do know what was before our little mental jaunt through the world but we have agreed that the price for the trip is amnesia. We have to suspend all common sense to get on this ride. Otherwise, it would be a pretty boring experience, I guess. So, there is fear of what we don’t remember.

Bound by Our Own Fear
More importantly, I suspect, is the fear of God, the fear that we have misused the power and might of God to separate ourselves from Him and if we leave this dream world we will have to face Him and take the consequences. As Jesus says: The world was made as an attack on God. ²It symbolizes fear. It seems to be a place where we can keep God out.

This is why so many fearful things occur here and at the same time, why we hesitate to release the idea of the world and let it disappear. No one said that we were entirely sane in our fear and confusion. Though it may seem a hopeless situation for us, the way out is simple. We can forgive the whole thing as soon as we want to. We are not prisoners here.

3. The mechanisms of illusion have been born instead. ²And now they go to find what has been given them to seek. ³Their aim is to fulfill the purpose which the world was made to witness and make real. ⁴They see in its illusions but a solid base where truth exists, upheld apart from lies. ⁵Yet everything that they report is but illusion which is kept apart from truth.
4. As sight was made to lead away from truth, it can be redirected. ²Sounds become the call for God, and all perception can be given a new purpose by the One Whom God appointed Savior to the world. ³Follow His light, and see the world as He beholds it. ⁴Hear His Voice alone in all that speaks to you. ⁵And let Him give you peace and certainty, which you have thrown away, but Heaven has preserved for you in Him.
5. Let us not rest content until the world has joined our changed perception. ²Let us not be satisfied until forgiveness has been made complete. ³And let us not attempt to change our function. ⁴We must save the world. ⁵For we who made it must behold it through the eyes of Christ, that what was made to die can be restored to everlasting life.

We Must Save the World
We made a mechanism that allows us to made the world seem real and to report to us what we want it to be. Then we believe in our own illusions. It seems so solid and real but it is upheld by lies. There is nothing we can do to make this world anything but an illusion, a dream, and not even that, just an ancient memory of what we made and that lasted but an instant.

That we think we are trapped here is just part of the illusion. The exit is right here in our mind next to the illusion. Let us forgive the belief we want a world and forgive all the thoughts that support it. We made sight to lead us away from truth, but we can give it a new purpose. We can start listening to the Holy Spirit and follow His Light and we will see the world He beholds. Remember that He speaks to us all through the day. We need only listen to Him rather than to our own split mind.

It is really that simple. It seems hard only when we slip back into taking our cues from the ego. The ego does not wish us well, it only desires to keep the world it made. But we can learn to turn away from that false voice and Hear His Voice instead. We can learn to take advice from the Holy Spirit instead of the ego and ask the Holy Spirit to interpret for us what the ego would use to distract and confuse.

This is our function, to save the world through accepting the Atonement for ourselves. What we accept for ourselves, we accept for the whole Sonship. Let us not forget our function today. Let us remember why we came this time, not to play around in the illusions, but to undo them, to return our awareness to God instead. And to help all the sleeping Sons to awaken. ⁴We must save the world. ⁵For we who made it must behold it through the eyes of Christ, that what was made to die can be restored to everlasting life.

© 2021, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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2. What Is Salvation

2. What Is Salvation?
1. Salvation is a promise, made by God, that you would find your way to Him at last. ²It cannot but be kept. ³It guarantees that time will have an end, and all the thoughts that have been born in time will end as well. ⁴God’s Word is given every mind which thinks that it has separate thoughts, and will replace these thoughts of conflict with the Thought of peace.

2. The Thought of peace was given to God’s Son the instant that his mind had thought of war. ²There was no need for such a Thought before, for peace was given without opposite, and merely was. ³But when the mind is split there is a need of healing. ⁴So the Thought that has the power to heal the split became a part of every fragment of the mind that still was one, but failed to recognize its oneness. ⁵Now it did not know itself, and thought its own Identity was lost.

This Thought of peace is what we call the Holy Spirit. In the moment that we chose to have this experience, God placed His Guarantee of salvation in the mind so that we could return Home when we were ready. Just as we imagined all the scripts and all the variations on those scripts that represent the desire for specialness and separation, the Holy Spirit gave us the corrected version of those scripts. Our job is to choose His version over and over until it is the only version of the script that we live. Thus the mind that has always been one, is healed and will know its Oneness.

3. Salvation is undoing in the sense that it does nothing, failing to support the world of dreams and malice. ²Thus it lets illusions go. ³By not supporting them, it merely lets them quietly go down to dust. ⁴And what they hid is now revealed; an altar to the holy Name of God whereon His Word is written, with the gifts of your forgiveness laid before it, and the memory of God not far behind.

The moment we recognize that we are entertaining ego thoughts, the healing begins. We don’t have to do anything to accomplish the healing; we simply need to be willing to see what needs correction and to want that correction. Then we will see what has always been there. ⁴And what they hid is now revealed; an altar to the holy Name of God whereon His Word is written, with the gifts of your forgiveness laid before it, and the memory of God not far behind.

4. Let us come daily to this holy place, and spend a while together. ²Here we share our final dream. ³It is a dream in which there is no sorrow, for it holds a hint of all the glory given us by God. ⁴The grass is pushing through the soil, the trees are budding now, and birds have come to live within their branches. ⁵Earth is being born again in new perspective. ⁶Night has gone, and we have come together in the light.

5. From here we give salvation to the world, for it is here salvation was received. ²The song of our rejoicing is the call to all the world that freedom is returned, that time is almost over, and God’s Son has but an instant more to wait until his Father is remembered, dreams are done, eternity has shined away the world, and only Heaven now exists at all. 

What happens as the mind is healed is that the conflict of everyday life subsides, the anxiety that comes from separation goes away and life becomes very peaceful. Happiness becomes a consistent state. We lose interest in judgment and grievances. Because we always give what we have, the world benefits from this shift and is saved. 

Jesus says that at this point, it is only an instant more before the Father is remembered and dreams are done, the world is shined away and only Heaven exists. I think it will feel like more than an instant to us. Or maybe the way it happens is that each of us begins to experience this Heaven on earth transformation until all the world experiences it and then maybe it really is only an instant before God takes that last step.

© 2021, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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1. What Is Forgiveness?

1. Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. ²It does not pardon sins and make them real. ³It sees there was no sin. ⁴And in that view are all your sins forgiven. ⁵What is sin, except a false idea about God’s Son? ⁶Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go. ⁷What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God.

This first paragraph explains what forgiveness is and what it does for us. It is basically saying that there is nothing to forgive. What someone has done that seems offensive to us has not actually occurred. There is no world and there are no bodies except in our mind and not in our true mind, but in our ego-mind. It is all imagination and projected out it is a hallucination. What is not real has no real effects. There is nothing to forgive because nothing has happened. As Jesus tells us: ⁷Much has been seen since then, but nothing has really happened. (ACIM, T-3.VII.5:7) So, what is there to forgive.

2. An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt, although it is not true. ²The mind is closed, and will not be released. ³The thought protects projection, tightening its chains, so that distortions are more veiled and more obscure; less easily accessible to doubt, and further kept from reason. ⁴What can come between a fixed projection and the aim that it has chosen as its wanted goal?

That first sentence is enough to pull me up short if I were tempted to not forgive. An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt, although it is not true. May I always question every unforgiving thought. Let me bring it to the light so that I can see that it is not true. Otherwise, I will close my mind to the truth so that I can keep believing the judgment. Maybe I want to be right more than I want to be happy. Maybe I want to protect my perceptions in spite of the suffering they cause. 

The more I defend my misperceptions, the more tangled my thinking becomes until I am unable to let anything come between my fixed projection and the aim that it has chosen as its wanted goal. It is easy to see this happening if I am willing to open my mind even a little. Suppose someone has decided that I don’t know what I am talking about and makes a public attempt to discredit me. I can see this as confusion and conflict in the mind and let it go without any concern whatsoever.

What if, on the other hand, I feel a strong need to defend my point of view? What if my need to be seen as right is stronger than my desire to be at peace? If this is the case, then no amount of common sense is going to get in the way of my goals of being right and being seen as right. I will argue and protest, I will lose friends, I will win whatever the cost because I have set my goal to be right. If I set a different goal, perhaps the peace of God, then the other cannot say anything to me or about me that is not immediately forgiven because only forgiveness will cause my goal to be met.

3. An unforgiving thought does many things. ²In frantic action it pursues its goal, twisting and overturning what it sees as interfering with its chosen path. ³Distortion is its purpose, and the means by which it would accomplish it as well. ⁴It sets about its furious attempts to smash reality, without concern for anything that would appear to pose a contradiction to its point of view.

As I am reading this, I am reminded of the political dissension in our country of late. People taking sides and holding tight to their beliefs about the situations, so tightly, that they will not even read about what the other side thinks and believes. Many will defend their point of view without regard to facts and will look for facts only where they expect agreement with them. Which side is right? Neither. 
Neither is right because both sides believe in the world and in the separation ideas that are being accepted as truth. Anything that adds to the burden of separation thinking is false simply because separation is not the Will of God and therefore cannot exist. Believing in separation is an error that causes suffering and keeps us from knowing who we are because who we are is whole, is one.

4. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. ²It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. ³It merely looks, and waits, and judges not. ⁴He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. ⁵But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is.

Returning to the idea of the divisiveness encouraged in politics recently, this divisiveness is the error. It offends reality and it seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. Not one side or another, but both sides are doing this in that many are taking a side and thus must now defend against an aspect of Self and thus defend against wholeness. Today’s politics is a clear image of a mind divided against itself. 

5. Do nothing, then, and let forgiveness show you what to do, through Him Who is your Guide, your Savior and Protector, strong in hope, and certain of your ultimate success. ²He has forgiven you already, for such is His function, given Him by God. ³Now must you share His function, and forgive whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees, and whom He honors as the Son of God.
(ACIM, W-pII.1.1:1–5:3)

So, what do I do about the unforgiven thoughts in my mind and their effects? I do nothing. I let forgiveness show me what to do. I let the Holy Spirit give me words where words are needed, and prompt me to silence when words would be a break in actual communication. I remember my purpose and I use the situations to achieve that purpose. I am forgiven and everyone else is forgiven, I simply choose to accept that this is true.

https://forgivenessisthewayhome.org/acim-1-what-is-forgiveness-2021/

© 2021, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Boxed In

I free myself when I give up the insane idea that God’s Son can be imprisoned in a body. When I stop thinking of myself in terms of a body. It is like I have drawn a box in the middle of the limitless awareness that I am, and have decided that I am only that which is in the box. My desire to be free dissolves the box I drew and I see that I am still the Creation of God, limitless and free. As I do this, I can no longer see anyone else as a body. How could they be? They are God’s Creation and thus they are the same as I am, within a whole, part of that whole and all of that whole.

How might I put myself back into that box? If I step on the scale and depending on what the number says, I am happy or upset. When this happens, it indicates that I am identified with the body, so much so that its size determines how I feel about myself. Another way I put myself back into the box is to see someone else as being his or her body, that is, seeing that person as his or her actions or looks or personality.

If I do this to someone else, I am teaching myself that I must also be what I do or how I look. There are so many little ways that I could put myself in the box. That box is so restricting. I don’t want to go back. I have asked the Holy Spirit to help me notice any remaining thoughts that could imprison me so that I can finally release them all. I am also remembering to frequently ask, “What am I?”

© 2021, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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What Is Forgiveness?

1. Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. ²It does not pardon sins and make them real. ³It sees there was no sin. ⁴And in that view are all your sins forgiven. ⁵What is sin, except a false idea about God’s Son? ⁶Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go. ⁷What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God.

This first paragraph explains what forgiveness is and what it does for us. It is basically saying that there is nothing to forgive. What someone has done that seems offensive to us has not actually occurred. There is no world and there are no bodies except in our mind and not in our true mind, but in our ego-mind. It is all imagination and projected out it is a hallucination. What is not real has no real effects. There is nothing to forgive because nothing has happened. As Jesus tells us: ⁷Much has been seen since then, but nothing has really happened. (ACIM, T-3.VII.5:7) So, what is there to forgive.

2. An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt, although it is not true. ²The mind is closed, and will not be released. ³The thought protects projection, tightening its chains, so that distortions are more veiled and more obscure; less easily accessible to doubt, and further kept from reason. ⁴What can come between a fixed projection and the aim that it has chosen as its wanted goal?

That first sentence is enough to pull me up short if I were tempted to not forgive. An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt, although it is not true. May I always question every unforgiving thought. Let me bring it to the light so that I can see that it is not true. Otherwise, I will close my mind to the truth so that I can keep believing the judgment. Maybe I want to be right more than I want to be happy. Maybe I want to protect my perceptions in spite of the suffering they cause. 

The more I defend my misperceptions, the more tangled my thinking becomes until I am unable to let anything come between my fixed projection and the aim that it has chosen as its wanted goal. It is easy to see this happening if I am willing to open my mind even a little. Suppose someone has decided that I don’t know what I am talking about and makes a public attempt to discredit me. I can see this as confusion and conflict in the mind and let it go without any concern whatsoever.

What if, on the other hand, I feel a strong need to defend my point of view? What if my need to be seen as right is stronger than my desire to be at peace? If this is the case, then no amount of common sense is going to get in the way of my goals of being right and being seen as right. I will argue and protest, I will lose friends, I will win whatever the cost because I have set my goal to be right. If I set a different goal, perhaps the peace of God, then the other cannot say anything to me or about me that is not immediately forgiven because only forgiveness will cause my goal to be met.

3. An unforgiving thought does many things. ²In frantic action it pursues its goal, twisting and overturning what it sees as interfering with its chosen path. ³Distortion is its purpose, and the means by which it would accomplish it as well. ⁴It sets about its furious attempts to smash reality, without concern for anything that would appear to pose a contradiction to its point of view.

As I am reading this, I am reminded of the political dissension in our country of late. People taking sides and holding tight to their beliefs about the situations, so tightly, that they will not even read about what the other side thinks and believes. Many will defend their point of view without regard to facts and will look for facts only where they expect agreement with them. Which side is right? Neither. 

Neither is right because both sides believe in the world and in the separation ideas that are being accepted as truth. Anything that adds to the burden of separation thinking is false simply because separation is not the Will of God and therefore cannot exist. Believing in separation is an error that causes suffering and keeps us from knowing who we are because who we are is whole, is one.

4. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. ²It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. ³It merely looks, and waits, and judges not. ⁴He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. ⁵But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is.

Returning to the idea of the divisiveness encouraged in politics recently, this divisiveness is the error. It offends reality and it seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. Not one side or another, but both sides are doing this in that many are taking a side and thus must now defend against an aspect of Self and thus defend against wholeness. Today’s politics is a clear image of a mind divided against itself. 

5. Do nothing, then, and let forgiveness show you what to do, through Him Who is your Guide, your Savior and Protector, strong in hope, and certain of your ultimate success. ²He has forgiven you already, for such is His function, given Him by God. ³Now must you share His function, and forgive whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees, and whom He honors as the Son of God.
(ACIM, W-pII.1.1:1–5:3)

So, what do I do about the unforgiven thoughts in my mind and their effects? I do nothing. I let forgiveness show me what to do. I let the Holy Spirit give me words where words are needed, and prompt me to silence when words would be a break in actual communication. I remember my purpose and I use the situations to achieve that purpose. I am forgiven and everyone else is forgiven, I simply choose to accept that this is true.

© 2021, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Visiting Mom

This is something I wrote several years ago. I thought it was worth revisiting.

I spent time with my mom today. She is in an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s. She looked sad even in her sleep; sad and anxious, like she was having a bad dream. When she woke up it took her a while to focus on me and longer still to register that I was visiting her. She seemed to be reaching her hand out to me and trying to communicate with her eyes. She doesn’t seem to be able to make sounds at me, or maybe she just forgets to try. She doesn’t remember who I am at all anymore.

I talked to her anyway, telling her that I love her and miss being with her. I told her that I wish we could talk again. But as I said it, I realized I didn’t want to talk to her; I wanted her to talk to me. I wished I could have one more chance to listen to her. I would listen without judging anything she said. I would like one more chance to listen for the wisdom in her words. I spent way too much time before this happened to her thinking that I knew something. I missed a lot of what she could have told me. I felt sad for the lost opportunity.

If I had one more chance to listen to her I would give her my undivided attention. I wouldn’t be thinking of the next stop on my list or something I heard on the news. I wouldn’t be listening for the errors in what she said, and I wouldn’t be thinking that she was behind the times, that the world had moved ahead and what she had to say was out of date. If I had one more chance I would not be so foolish. I would just sit and listen as if she were the wise old woman, and the words falling from her lips were treasures she was freely giving. How lucky I would be.

© 2021, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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