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Study of Manual for Teachers 4-16-12

Day 106

7 But what will now be your reaction to all magic thoughts? They can but re-awaken sleeping guilt, which you have hidden but have not let go. Each one says clearly to your frightened mind, “You have usurped the place of God. Think not He has forgotten.” Here we have the fear of God most starkly represented. For in that thought has guilt already raised madness to the throne of God Himself. And now there is no hope. Except to kill. Here is salvation now. An angry father pursues his guilty son. Kill or be killed, for here alone is choice. Beyond this there is none, for what was done cannot be done without. The stain of blood can never be removed, and anyone who bears this stain on him must meet with death.

Well ok. Jesus could not be any clearer. My fear of God is more like terror of God. This explains why it has taken so long to reach a place of willingness to begin the awakening process. It also explains why there was so much resistance even as I began to accept that I believe something that is not true. Even now I still resist. I am in a whole new place, but I am not yet willing to fully let go of my defenses.

I have to remind myself not to judge this. I am where I am, and honestly, I’m pretty excited about where I am. It is easy to become confused about this, to think I am the one asleep, to think I am my errors. I am not that. Myron is just where I have my attention, where I have placed my awareness. There is something happening which is outside her story.

I think in the past I mentioned that I have started listening to A Course in Miracles as I sleep. Since I started doing this, my dreams have changed. Last night in my dream I felt incredibly peaceful and aware. A character that was someone close to me was like I used to be; he was reacting to the story. As I stood with him I felt what he felt and understood his fear while not believing in it. It was amazing. He was evidently ready to begin his process, too, because he felt something of my peace and wanted it.

Later in the dream there was another person who was going to do something cruel for no apparent reason and I felt him too. I felt the unacknowledged fear deep within him that was driving his actions. I knew that he couldn’t help but do what he was doing, and I didn’t feel any resentment toward him at all.

When I woke up I felt some of the elation of experiencing that kind of peaceful awareness. I just lay there thinking, “Wow, wow, wow!” So I see that there is much more happening than is apparent in my every day life. I am willing to continue doing whatever it is that my Higher Self would have me do. I am doing it with a lot more trust now than I used to.

Something that really stands out to me in this paragraph is the first couple of sentences. Jesus is telling us that our magic thoughts are constantly reminding us of our hidden guilt. Rather than looking at the guilt and allowing our minds to be healed finally, we project the fear and guilt out as a story in our life. This gives us an explanation for the guilt that allows us to go on pretending we don’t know the source of the guilt.

But every time we entertain ego thoughts we are reminded that there is a monster in the basement, and our fear is awakened. We can’t do anything about it, though, because we are denying that the monster is there, and to deal with the source of the fear is out of the question. We cannot admit the source so we can’t deal with it. What a mess we have gotten ourselves into. Thank you, Jesus, my brother, my self, for finding your way out of this and showing us the way out.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 4-15-12

Day 105

6 How can this unfair battle be resolved? Its ending is inevitable, for its outcome must be death. How, then, can one believe in one’s defenses? Magic again must help. Forget the battle. Accept it as a fact, and then forget it. Do not remember the impossible odds against you. Do not remember the immensity of the “enemy,” and do not think about your frailty in comparison. Accept your separation, but do not remember how it came about. Believe that you have won it, but do not retain the slightest memory of Who your great “opponent” really is. Projecting your “forgetting” onto Him, it seems to you He has forgotten, too.

I have said that I just don’t “feel” the guilt of opposing God that the Course talks about, and Jesus is telling me that this is my magical solution to my fear. My inability to identify with this depth of guilt is not accidental. It is my way of escaping it. I then project the same forgetfulness onto God. There, problem solved!

But what is in my mind, no matter how deeply hidden, will affect me. The guilt will peek out of its hiding place and I will experience guilt that I cannot afford to acknowledge directly. So I make a reason for it, and pretend to myself that I have discovered the cause of my guilt and my fear.

Sometimes it appears as a foolish or bad thing that I did to someone. “That must be the reason I am guilty.” Sometimes I make up a story about someone else. “There, that must be the reason I am angry and the reason I must now defend myself. I know that guy was the guilty one. Whew.”

This is endless and it is painful. But through the study of “A Course in Miracles” I have been shown what is actually happening, and through the practice of “A Course in Miracles” I am being gently awakened to the truth that my guilt is self-imposed and my fear is unfounded.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 4-14-12

Day 104
5 Anger in response to perceived magic thoughts is a basic cause of fear. Consider what this reaction means, and its centrality in the world’s thought system becomes apparent. A magic thought, by its mere presence, acknowledges a separation from God. It states, in the clearest form possible, that the mind which believes it has a separate will that can oppose the Will of God, also believes it can succeed. That this can hardly be a fact is obvious. Yet that it can be believed as fact is equally obvious. And herein lies the birthplace of guilt. Who usurps the place of God and takes it for himself now has a deadly “enemy.” And he must stand alone in his protection, and make himself a shield to keep him safe from fury that can never be abated, and vengeance that can never be satisfied.

This phrase is most meaningful to me: …the mind which believes it has a separate will that can oppose the Will of God, also believes it can succeed. When I read that, I felt it in my gut. I know the Course has been trying very hard to get me to understand the source of my guilt, and then to understand that the guilt is unfounded. But it has been hard for me to embrace this idea.

Intellectually I can accept it, but I can’t feel it. This phrase is helping me to more fully accept that I harbor a deep reservoir of guilt which affects everything I believe, and this guilt was born of the belief that I can and did separate myself from God, and that I have a will that is in opposition to God.

Only recently have I understood that the whole world as I see it is a projection of that guilt, a repository for the guilt that is so deeply buried that I am, on the surface, unaware of it. Letting go of the idea that the stories of my life are the source of my fear and guilt has been very hard for me to do. I will think I understand this, but then I notice I still look to my stories for the cause of how I feel.

I had to stop and laugh because just this moment I was thinking that I woke up feeling draggy and was wondering what caused it. Did I sleep too hard? Was it a dream I had? Was it working such a hard week and not sleeping well during the week that caused this draggy feeling this morning? It is, indeed, hard to remember that the cause is not to be found in the story.

Something else that has helped me very much came from The Teachings of Inner Ramana. It talks about fear, but fear and guilt are so closely associated they are interchangeable. This is what it says.

The mind is afraid because the unnatural is not natural. The mind that has forgotten reality knows that something is wrong, but it does not know what that is. It projects stories in an effort to give itself a reason for its fear, but it cannot find the answer it seeks because it is looking in the wrong direction. Its fear does not come from its own projections, and so solutions to those projections cannot end the fear.

My sluggish body is the projection and not the cause. Figuring out how to wake up energetic is not the way to solve the problem. That is looking in the wrong direction.

This really helped me to see that the fear and guilt came from someplace else, not from what was happening in my life. In fact, what was happening in my life came from the fear and guilt that the Course has been trying to help me see. It must be some incredible fear and guilt for me to bury it so deeply that I seem unable (or perhaps more truthfully, unwilling) to extract it. But now I know that I will never be rid of the guilt through trying to fix the story.

As I look back on my life it is as if it were made of one guilty, fearful situation after another with me always trying to make up for something. I would do something that caused circumstances that made me feel guilty and I would then try to fix it, or be a better person to make up for it. I never caught up. I see now that this is because all those things I did were caused by the buried guilt in my mind. Trying to fix the story was like trying to repair the reflection in the mirror. I really was looking in the wrong direction.

I still don’t feel the full burden of that guilt, and that’s ok. I am willing for this slow and gentle healing. I am willing to take the next step and the next. The Holy Spirit knows the perfect path for me and I am content to walk it. I continue to watch my stories and notice what yet needs healing within my mind. I am being guided now to see my innocence and for that I am supremely grateful.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 4-13-12

Day 103
4 Perhaps it will be helpful to remember that no one can be angry at a fact. It is always an interpretation that gives rise to negative emotions, regardless of their seeming justification by what appears as facts. Regardless, too, of the intensity of the anger that is aroused. It may be merely slight irritation, perhaps too mild to be even clearly recognized. Or it may also take the form of intense rage, accompanied by thoughts of violence, fantasized or apparently acted out. It does not matter. All of these reactions are the same. They obscure the truth, and this can never be a matter of degree. Either truth is apparent, or it is not. It cannot be partially recognized. Who is unaware of truth must look upon illusions.

I am happy to say that I really know that it is always my interpretation of a fact that causes my anger. I am never angry that something happened or that someone said something. I am angry because of the meaning I gave that something. It is helpful for me to remember that there are no exceptions to this rule. It is always true regardless of the apparent circumstances.

How does knowing this change things for me? When I become angry with someone I don’t try to figure out how to change them or the situation. I know that they are not the problem. I look to my own mind for the belief that needs to be healed. Sometimes the circumstances can be so compelling that I become temporarily confused. I know that this is my problem, but for a bit I can’t see how that could be. So I have some processes that help.

One thing I can do is to write down on a sheet of paper what happened. I put only the basic fact or facts. An example might be that my boss yells at me for something I absolutely did not do and did not have any control over. I feel very angry. In the wash of emotion I may find it hard to understand why this has anything to do with me. I am innocent and I don’t do that to him or anyone else, I think. My mind is confused because I am holding these two conflicting thoughts. It is my perception that is causing the problem and it is his behavior that is causing the problem.

So I get out my paper and I ask the Holy Spirit to sit with me as I do this exercise and to do it in a way that helps me. I write the fact down; my boss yelled at me for something I didn’t do. Then under that sentence I make a list about every thought I have concerning this situation beginning with, “he is wrong”.

He has no right to yell at me at all. He is taking his upset out on me. I am an innocent victim. He’s treating me with no respect. If he can yell at me for something I didn’t do, can he fire me for something I didn’t do? Sure he can. No matter how hard I work or how good a job I do, he can lose his temper and I lose my job. These will probably lead into more thoughts and I write down all that come to me.

Then I fold the paper so that the first line is on one side of the fold and the other side holds everything else. The side with the one fact (Katie calls it the first generation thought) is the only thing that happened. The other side of the paper is my interpretation of what happened. Just doing this exercise is helpful to me when I am confused. Now I remember that I have given this situation all the meaning it has for me. Everything under the fold is that meaning.

Once this has been established, I ask the Holy Spirit to help me see this differently. If I am ready to choose peace then peace is given me. If not, then I may have to do some more work. One thing I might do is get out a Byron Katie worksheet and ask the Holy Spirit to help me fill it out. This can also give me more clarity and help to bring me to the place where I am ready for healing.

Another way I do this is to sit with pen and paper or maybe at my keyboard, and tell Holy Spirit all about it. Then I ask Him for help, and begin to put down what comes into my mind. This is very powerful. The answer may be the same thing I can read in the Course or some other book, or hear from a teacher, but when it comes from within, it has far more impact.

The work is never about me healing my mind; it is about me desiring healing more than I desire to project blame. Once I truly want healing, I am healed.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers4-12-12

Day 102
3 It is easiest to let error be corrected where it is most apparent, and errors can be recognized by their results. A lesson truly taught can lead to nothing but release for teacher and pupil, who have shared in one intent. Attack can enter only if perception of separate goals has entered. And this must indeed have been the case if the result is anything but joy. The single aim of the teacher turns the divided goal of the pupil into one direction, with the call for help becoming his one appeal. This then is easily responded to with just one answer, and this answer will enter the teacher’s mind unfailingly. From there it shines into his pupil’s mind, making it one with his.

Pam calls me every week and we talk about the difficult relationship she has with her husband. Very gently we explore this relationship and each time she realizes that her husband is not the source of her unhappiness, and she ends the hour with a renewed desire to focus on her own mind, and each week she forgets this. Each week we start the process over again and it appears as if we are not making any true progress.

When I listen to the thinking mind I wonder if we are wasting our time. I wonder if I am doing something wrong and maybe I should suggest someone who would be better able to help. I think maybe I should say something to her, something that would give her a mental shake, get her to try harder or be more serious about moving through this.

If I were to listen to the ego mind and act on those thoughts I would be attacking my student. I would be making the problem real for her by telling her that she needs to work harder or do something to make a change. Right now those thoughts are just passing through my mind and I can just let them pass through. But if I begin to focus on them, I will say something whether I plan to or not. Even if I don’t say something, our one mind will be affected by the belief.

When Pam and I first started talking we shared one goal; we wanted to join in healing the mind. If I listened to the ego impatient mind, we would no longer share a single goal, because now I would have a different goal. I would have a perceived best outcome and I would have a timetable, and I would think the goal would be to get Pam to that outcome and to do so in a timely manner. In my mind Pam’s goal would be to meet my expectations, and my goal would be to succeed in getting her to do that.

Now whatever I say to Pam to encourage this goal of mine will be an attack, and will engender fear in Pam that she cannot do this, that maybe she cannot heal and be happy. And it will engender fear in me that I won’t be successful in helping Pam and so will be a failure. If carried too far, I will start to project my fear onto Pam and believe it is her fault I am failing and that I feel so bad.

If instead I see the thoughts and ignore them, and stay true to our one shared goal, I will trust the Holy Spirit to guide my words and actions. I will wait for His answer to be in my mind before I say anything. Without a perceived outcome and without a need to make something happen, the counseling will move at a pace and in a direction that is not my concern. I will trust that Love will find its own way in its own time. Pam cannot fail and neither can I because our goal is one and Love cannot fail.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 4-11-12

Day 101

2 There is, however, a temptation to respond to magic in a way that reinforces it. Nor is this always obvious. It can, in fact, be easily concealed beneath a wish to help. It is this double wish that makes the help of little value, and must lead to undesired outcomes. Nor should it be forgotten that the outcome that results will always come to teacher and to pupil alike. How many times has it been emphasized that you give but to yourself? And where could this be better shown than in the kinds of help the teacher of God gives to those who need his aid? Here is his gift most clearly given him. For he will give only what he has chosen for himself. And in this gift is his judgment upon the holy Son of God.

Jesus says that we may be tempted to respond to magic in a way that reinforces it. I am aware of that temptation in myself at times. This is usually a temptation when someone else’s magic belief is also my belief. It may not be one I acknowledge, and if it is one I deny in myself, the reinforcement may not be obvious. This makes sense because I am keeping the belief a secret from myself, so I will need to keep the reinforcement a secret, too.

Yesterday I mentioned that while I was at the hospital with family, we got into a conversation about illnesses. I noticed that I still reinforce the belief that sickness is a result of outside forces, and I did this in an effort to be helpful. “Have you tried this? I heard that works” It’s the kind of thing nearly everyone does, and it seems like I’m just trying to be helpful, but the ego’s hidden agenda is to make the illusion of illness more real and to limit the solution to the ego choices.

Jesus emphasizes that as I reinforce these beliefs I am doing so for the person I am speaking to, but also for me as well. It is as if the one to whom I am responding is showing me the prison he inhabits and instead of offering him a key to release the door, I put another bar in place. Since I am in agreement with him, we share this prison and so I have reinforced both his confinement and my own.

Now as I write this I have another choice to make. I can judge my behavior and feel guilty for my lapse in which case I reinforce the ego identity and fall deeper into the illusion of a false self. Or I can allow myself to be exactly where I am in every moment without judgment. In the hospital setting I was confused about my identity. Now I am not. I am not guilty for my confusion. It is judgment and the resultant guilt that makes me hide what’s happening, and what is hidden cannot be healed. Without judgment and guilt I feel happy and excited to see how easy it is to change my mind.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 4-10-12

Day 100
7. HOW DO GOD’S TEACHERS DEAL WITH MAGIC THOUGHTS?

1 This is a crucial question both for teacher and pupil. If this issue is mishandled, the teacher of God has hurt himself and has also attacked his pupil. This strengthens fear, and makes the magic seem quite real to both of them. How to deal with magic thus becomes a major lesson for the teacher of God to master. His first responsibility in this is not to attack it. If a magic thought arouses anger in any form, God’s teacher can be sure that he is strengthening his own belief in sin and has condemned himself. He can be sure as well that he has asked for depression, pain, fear and disaster to come to him. Let him remember, then, it is not this that he would teach, because it is not this that he would learn. 

Its obviously very important that we learn to deal with magic thoughts, for our own sakes as well as those we teach. We always get what we give, and so if we teach magic we learn magic. It is these magic thoughts that keep the illusion in place and prevent us from awakening from this illusion.

I know I still do this. I still have many magic thoughts, and sometimes its hard to see them. I know that I am listening to ego when I am upset in any way, but I am pretty clever at hiding my beliefs from myself. I was trying to think of an example this morning because examples from my life help me to see more clearly.

I over slept this morning and so was running behind on my time. Also I had an early appointment so I was anxious about how I could do my study, get ready for the day and pack my car for the week out of town. I am unwilling to skip any of those things that needed to be done. My customer had told me that he would call if he needed to cancel, so I thought that might happen, was hoping it would happen.

I don’t like feeling anxious and now that I know it is not necessary and that anxiety is a choice and therefore avoidable, I stopped and thought about today’s reading.

I asked Holy Spirit to help me because my mind was still wrapped in a fog of ego confusion. I was looking at appearances and believing them so it was hard to see the magic in the thinking. When I asked for clarity, I saw that I believed several thoughts that are in that category.

When I saw that I had over slept I thought about how groggy I felt even though I had enough sleep, and immediately the ego mind went to work finding excuses and reasons including my age, and my extra busy weekend. I thought about articles I have read about sleep deprivation and how long it takes to catch up. The ego always directs my attention outwardly. This is magic thinking.

If someone had spoken to me this morning I might have expressed the ego beliefs, much as I sometimes do when people start talking about their illnesses. I might tell them what I know about that illness, share something I read, suggest possible treatments. This response is so hard for me stop.

While at the hospital this weekend I did exactly this, and even as I did it I knew it was not good. When I asked the Holy Spirit what I could say instead, the thought I had was to listen in the moment for His words, and if I could not do that then just listen to the person speaking rather than adding to the error.

Looking for a story to explain my unhappiness is magic thinking because the story is the result, not the cause. I will never find the cause in the story; therefore I will never fix the cause. The cause is in my mind, my thoughts and beliefs

Sharing in someone’s delusion about anything is magic thinking and only adds to the illusion, increasing their fear and their belief in what is not true. In both these cases I am teaching a lie and therefore learning the lie, so I am doing double harm. Holy Spirit, I understand that when I am not extending love, I am attacking. Please help me as I watch my mind for this kind of thinking. First, I would do no harm.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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