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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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God’s Will for Me Is Perfect Happiness

I share God’s Will for happiness for me, and I accept it as my function now.
Lesson 102

I have not always been as happy as I am now. In fact, I wasn’t as happy yesterday as I am today. Every day is an adventure in finding my happy. I want to share a few things that I have learned that help me to live a more joyful and fulfilling life. Each one of these methods is proven to work for me.

You still believe it asks for suffering as penance for your “sins.” This is not so. Lesson 101

First of all, I had to learn to want to be happy. I don’t think I used to believe that I could be happy or that I deserved happiness. I made a lot of mistakes in my life, and in my regret, I made the additional mistake of thinking that what I did in the past negated a better future. I had to forgive myself and forgive the past, letting it go entirely before I could experience the present joy.

Be happy, for your only function here is happiness.
Lesson 102

The other thing I had to do to accept happiness was to let go of the idea that I needed something to change so that I could be happy. I thought that the circumstances in my life determined my level of happiness. I was wrong about that. It wasn’t what was happening that mattered, but what I thought about what was happening that decided how I would feel.

What I have learned to do since this revelation is to decide on happiness; I just committed to being happy no matter what was going on in the world or my little corner of it. An example of this working in my life occurred near Thanksgiving. It seemed like my freezer went out. I stood in front of it and watched my ice cream melting, wondering what I was going to do about it.

I didn’t know if this could be repaired or who to call to do it. I felt a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing. I checked the cost of replacing the refrigerator in case that was the route I would have to go and was further upset by the price. Then I remembered that I am committed to happiness, so I thought about that. Could I be happy while my freezer was on the blitz and I didn’t know what to do?

I thought about being upset while my freezer was not working and then I thought about being happy while my freezer was not working.  Would it help the situation to be upset? Would it make it worse if I was happy? Since the answer was no to both questions, I decided to be happy. I believed in my answer, so all the stress just dissolved. The freezer thing worked out fine and I didn’t waste a day of my life being disgruntled and anxious.

Truth occupies your mind completely, liberating you from all beliefs in the ephemeral. Lesson 107

Another thing that helps me in my quest for a happy life is to realize that my thoughts are going to direct my experience. I discovered that I might not be able to control the fact that fear thoughts or anger thoughts come into my mind, but I can control how much attention I give them. When I release the false thoughts, truth occupies my mind. As in the freezer situation, I had thoughts that I didn’t know what to do and thoughts that I couldn’t afford a new refrigerator, so I was in trouble.

But I chose not to follow those thoughts. If I had done so, I would have caused myself greater upset, and it would be harder to see this differently, in a more forgiving light. Instead of following those thoughts, I chose happiness, and as I did so, my mind was clearer, and I could think better. Without the distress clouding my mind, I remembered that I had changed the temperature of the refrigerator and so I turned it back up.

Evidently, when I had adjusted the temperature of the refrigerator the day before it affected the freezer and that was the problem all along. If I had followed the fearful thoughts, I might have acted impulsively and replaced a perfectly good refrigerator, or at the least, paid a repairman for coming out to see what was wrong. By choosing to be happy and refusing to follow negative thoughts, I made room for the truth and liberated my mind from false beliefs. In so doing, I saved myself a lot of money and distress.

Happiness is an attribute of love. It cannot be apart from it. Lesson 103

Although there are a number of things that help me to live a happy life, I want to mention just one more, love. Applying love to any situation makes it better. I used to have a difficult relationship with someone at work. I tried everything I could think of to change the dynamics of the relationship, and it seemed the harder I tried, the worse the relationship became.

I had to work with this person every day, and our attitude toward each other was making that a miserable proposition. I could not do anything to change his attitude, obviously, so I worked on mine. What finally turned the trick was my decision to love him. To my logical mind this seemed impossible, but with the same commitment I give to being happy, love transformed that relationship. We are still friends today.

I think of love as the miracle salve that I apply to every injury, every hurt, every sad or angry thought. It heals guilt as well as grievances. It smooths out the rough spots in the roads we travel, and it brings peace to every situation in which we find ourselves. I am learning to love everything in my life, the people and situations I enjoy and those that challenge me.

Love is the way I walk in gratitude. Lesson 195

The bow that wraps up this package is gratitude. Gratitude is the close cousin to love, sometimes being the effect of love, sometimes being the walk I take to bring me to love. I might have trouble accepting that I love a particularly difficult person in my life, but I might be able to feel gratitude for him. I am grateful that he is playing his part in our shared lesson in forgiveness. Then it is just a short step to loving him for doing so, and another small step to simply love him as part of me and part of our Creator.

© 2023, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Helping Someone Who Is in Fear

I have been sharing the Miracles Practioners course 923 with a fellow student. This one is on the Psychotherapy section of the Course. The following is in answer to a question from 923.

How am I being taught by the Holy Spirit to receive His gifts and play the role of patient-therapist?

When someone I’m with feels fear in any form, I watch my reaction. If I am triggered by their situation, I ask the Holy Spirit for clarity and let Him heal my mind. Then I allow that healing to extend to the person I am with in whatever way comes to my mind. It will be the more helpful response because I have asked for it. The response will also help me to further heal because we are always the first receivers of whatever we give.

I was with a close friend and she was telling me that she has unexplained pain. She was feeling anxiety about this. What I know about her is that she was anxious about the virus, obsessed with it, really. Then the hurricane hit and her anxiety obsession moved to that. When she returned home from the evacuation, she focused her obsessive anxiety on the election.

She has never dealt with the anxiety and her tendency to obsess so it just moves from one form to another. It has become a thought habit and so now instead of simply exploring the problem, she is experiencing anxiety over the pain. She is doing with this what she has taught herself to do with other forms of fear in her life. She is imagining the worse possible outcomes and fretting about it.

I see what is going on with her and I am sorry. I also know that she is not interested in seeing this differently. I give her the only gift she will accept. I love her. I express that love by listening to her and by remaining a peaceful presence. I don’t join her in her fear and I don’t try to talk her out of it. I ask a few questions that suggest it might not be as bad as she thinks. I suggest that if it persists or gets worse, she might go to the doctor. My words let her know that I care and my demeanor lets her know that I am not really worried. That was all I felt to do or say.

On the other hand, if she were a Course student, I may have been guided to say something different. I might have reminded her to look within at her thoughts. We might have done a root cause inquiry. We might have prayed together. What was actually done or said would depend on what was given us through the Holy Spirit. But what is the same is that I would have loved her and listened to her and I would have been a peaceful presence.

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