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The Blessings Just Keep Coming

One of the most valuable things about the experience I recently had with my mom, (see Seeing Mom Clearly) was watching what happens when I withdraw my projections. I was sad to see her in that position of course, but most of my discomfort was in picturing myself in her place and also my guilt over all the things I did and said that I could not make amends for. So I was projecting my fear and guilt and anger onto her.

Discovering that she was not suffereing as I had supposed, made it easier to stop projecting and allowed me to see her differently. Well, over the last few days, I have come to realize that I have withdrawn ALL the projections I had put on her in our life together. I see her clean and beautiful now, and so completely innocent. I find that I long to visit again just to be nearer that lovely spirit.

I am filled with a sense of excitement at the possibilities. If I withdraw my projections from other people in my life, how will they look to me? As I do this for more and more people, will this feeling of joy expand? Will I begin to experience myself as innocent as well?

Holy Spirit, I don’t know how to do this by myself. I invite you into my mind and ask that you correct my projection thoughts about the people in my life. I am willing to relinquish the need I thought I had to make them guilty. I long to see the innocence in them instead. I long to know my own innocence.

Thank you.

 

 

© 2006, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Seeing Mom Clearly

I recently read about a new speaker scheduled for the ACIM Conference in San Francisco next February. Her name is Tammy Holmes and she is a spiritual coach as well as a gifted sensitive. For reasons I didn?t understand, I felt very strongly guided to call Tammy for a reading. So I went to her web page, stayawakeproductions.com, and got her phone number.

She helped me see a lot of things clearly and also shared with me some great info about my kids and future relationships. However, there were two very important things she told me. One of them was about my mom.

Mom is in a nursing home experiencing Alzheimer?s. I have always found it very hard to visit her because she doesn’t remember me, can’t communicate, and seems to be in such a sad confused state. I never visit that I don’t rush out in tears.

Tammy told me she was speaking to Mom and that she wanted to assure me that she is not in that body. Mom says that she is glad not to be in the body because she didn’t think she could stand it. She says that she is working on things and that even though she is not in the body, she enjoys my visits because she can feel my energy. She loves me very much and wishes we had had more time together.

I felt so much better. It was so good to know that Mom was not suffering the indignities inflicted by Alzheimer?s. It was such a relief to know that outside that body she still knows me and loves me. I am glad to know that she is not hanging around out of fear of dieing, but because she still has work to do.

I went by to see her the next day. Without all my projections of fear and guilt placed on her I could see her clearly. I saw that her eyes were glazed over; there simply wasn’t anyone home. I stood there wondering how to best be with her. I no longer felt the need to entertain or distract her with stories she could not relate to anyway. I no longer felt the need to make inane conversation just to nervously fill time before I could feel justified in getting out of there.

I held her hand and told her how much I loved her. I bent over and kissed her. She turned her head and looked me straight in the eye. She said very clearly, “love you.” It was such a dramatic change and my heart was so touched. It took real effort for her to get the words out, and her eyes were so clear and focused on me. Then she mumbled something I could not really understand except for the word gratitude. I told her that I was grateful for her, too, and that she had been a wonderful mom. She smiled at me, then turned her head and went away.

I will never dread visiting my mom again.

© 2006, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Healing From the Inside Out

I chose healing as my topic today, because this is what I most need to learn. I don?t know everything there is to know about healing, but what I have come to understand is that healing does not take place in the body at all, and that it is the correction of my thoughts that bring about healing.

It is the mistaken thought that I can be separate from God and from my brother that cause illness. This belief system, which A Course in Miracles calls the ego, is the source of all dis-ease in the body. The Holy Spirit tells me that I am God?s holy child, that He created me like Himself, and that He has not changed His mind about me. So if I do feel separate from God, it must be in my mind that the separation has occurred. It is in my mind that the correction must be made.

These separation thoughts are reflected in my relationships as well. When a friend disagrees with me about something I have made important it feels like an attack, and so I defend myself. If I did not see us as separate who would there be to attack me? Who would I defend against? This whole thing could only happen if I believed we were separate beings with separate interests and so in competition. God created but one Son and so it is not possible that we are separate from each other. All of these thoughts began, not in creation, but in my mind. It is here that they must be healed.

When I see myself as being separate, it is as if there were this gap that existed between me and the one who is not me. It is in that little gap I imagine exists between myself and others that the seed of sickness germinates. As I mentally close that little gap, I replace the seed of sickness with the seed of healing and wholeness.

So how do I close the gap I imagine exists between myself and my brother, and myself and God? Awareness is the most useful tool that I have found; just being aware of what I am thinking, how I am reacting. Separation is such an unnatural state that it requires a lot of effort to hold it in place. Learning to recognize the kind of thinking I use to do this is the first step in the undoing process. Awareness of my emotions is helpful in this. If I feel angry, fearful, guilty, depressed, then I know that I am experiencing separation anxiety.

Anything that makes me feel unique and special signals a belief in separation. For instance, if I believe that I am a better mom than my friend is, I?ve made myself special and different from her. That thought has created a little gap between us, a place where we are not the same. The other side of the coin would be if I thought I was a worse mom than her. Again, I have made myself special, only this time I am especially bad. Good or bad, it doesn?t matter; a feeling of specialness, of uniqueness causes me to believe that I am different from my brother and therefore separate.

I have a couple of processes that I use to help me undo my separation thoughts.  Each of these processes requires my willingness to be healed, but allows the healing to be accomplished by the Holy Spirit. One of these is a simple three step process which I learned from Dan Joseph in his book, Inner Healing. I use this process every day, many times a day.

The first step is to be mindful of my thoughts so that I can catch separation thoughts as they occur. One day at work, I got a call from an angry customer. Someone in the office had messed up his order and he was threatening to buy from someone else. This would have cost me a lot of money and I was really upset. The more I thought about it the angrier I got. It was a careless mistake made by someone who should know better. What did she care? It wasn?t her money. I started to notice that my neck was stiff and that and that I was getting a headache.

My anger and fearful reaction, as well as my body?s response to these separation thoughts brought me up short. I could see what I was doing, but it was hard to halt the forward movement of my reaction. But that is OK. I am not expected to do my own correction, just be willing to see things differently.

The second step is to give these thoughts which represent my beliefs, to the Holy Spirit for correction. I knew that this was not the truth and that I wanted another way to think. I asked the Holy Spirit to correct my thoughts and heal my mind of the belief in separation. I gave Him all my thoughts about being afraid of losing a customer (my belief that I was separate from God, my Source), and I gave Him all my thoughts about my brother being the cause of my discomfort (my belief in our separation).

The third step is to allow myself to feel the love and comfort of God. It is in that little space of time that I allowed the work to be done. I didn?t try to think my way out of this, making excuses for people I clearly found to be at fault. I just gave it to the Holy Spirit with the clear expectation that He would know what to do about it.

Because I did this process, I was able to release my anger, and when I spoke to the office, it was from a place of love. We figured out what went wrong and fixed the problem. If I had stayed in anger, I am sure I would not have received such cooperation, and I am equally sure I would not have been so calm and certain when I called my customer. Who knows how it might have turned out?

What makes this process different than other processes I have tried is the miracle a change in perception makes. Mostly in the past, my efforts were directed toward behavioral modification rather than true change at the level of cause. When I invite the Holy Spirit into my mind, there is a healing from outside the ego.

Another process I have found helpful is imagining. The Course suggests this and Brent Haskell describes it beautifully. Here is an example of how I use this. I had a bump on my lip that wouldn?t go away. It had persisted for several weeks, seeming to get smaller then returning to full size. The longer it stayed the more fun the ego had with it. My mom had skin cancer more than once and so I started thinking about that. I thought about getting an appointment with the doctor, but then decided to use this process instead.

I sat very still for a moment and imagined. I imagined what it would be like to know that this body is not me. I am not even in this body, but only directing it to play out my choices within this illusion. How does this feel, I asked myself, and then I allowed myself time to just sit with that feeling and to experience it. I wondered, how would it feel not to be afraid of this, and then I allowed myself to experience not being afraid.

I imagined what it would be like to know that I am spirit, the holy Son of God, perfectly created by a perfect God, completely and forever unchanged. I felt my power in God and knew that all things are my choice, and that I am free to change my mind. I allowed myself to feel that; to experience that truth. And as I allowed myself to experience the truth of who I am, I felt freedom ?begin to seep into my soul.?

Later that day, I noticed the bump on my lip was gone. My healing didn?t come because I used the right words, or said the right affirmations. It came because I allowed myself to experience the truth; that I am part of God. That I choose everything that comes into my life, and so I choose everything that leaves my life. I do this through the power that is in me as God?s Son.

That bump was just a symptom.  I wanted to heal more than the symptom and so I went to the source of the problem which was my confusion about who I am. This process works because it is not about thinking, and reasoning my way out of a problem-both ego activities. It is about experiencing; being. In this experience I reached my highest Self, and so again, I went outside my ego for healing.

It is essential that I remember healing takes place from the inside out. To be truly healed, it must happen at the level of thought, not at the doctor?s office or the pharmacy. Those are just tools we use within the illusion, a way of giving ourselves permission to heal. They only work if we decide they do. If I am unable to accept healing in any other way, I take medicine and that’s ok. I am not loved any less by God because of it. I simply recognize that I am using magic and that the real healing was in my decision to recognize my union with God and my brother. 

It is possible for us to heal each other. Our minds are not separate. The power of one mind can shine into another. In order to be helpful to our brother we must be very clear that sickness is an illusion. In truth, God did not create sickness so it cannot exist. Being helpful is a matter of learning to stand apart from the dream, but not the dreamer. Yes, I see that he thinks he is sick, that his body suffers, but what I know is that he is not his body. My focus is not on his apparent illness, but on his wholeness, his strength, and his perfection.

While pain is not the truth, in my illusion I certainly feel it. I would not find it helpful for someone to tell me that the migraine I am suffering is not real and neither is the pain. The reason that pain is such a convincing tool for the ego to teach separation is that it is so compelling, and so words may not be useful.

What is always useful is the joining of my brother at the level of mind. What is shared is strengthened. If I am sick, please overlook what seems to be happening in the body, and know for me that this is not who I am. That is the most helpful thing anyone can do for me.  Do your best to keep your attention on that, and not to be distracted by the illusory body. In truth, the strength of your conviction will weaken my belief in sickness. 

This is my practice. My body reflects my vigilance. When I am living an aware life and am allowing myself to experience my unity with God, my body is healthy. This is my condition more and more often. When I choose to live unconsciously, and I am in conflict and turmoil, my body reflects this, and I become sick. It is an excellent communication device, always keeping me up to date on how I am choosing to think.

When we are told that we need to change at the level of thought, this is what is meant. Changing my thoughts is not about chanting affirmations or self-talk about being free of addictions or being thinner, or disease free. It is about living in harmony and peace. It is about choosing to think not with the ego, but with God. It is choosing to recognize that I am not separate but am part of God with my brothers. As I choose to do this more and more often, my body will respond with health and vigor.

© 2006, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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