Together, We Light the Way

Click link to go to:
Together We Light the Way Index

Study of the Text 11-30-12

11-30-12
6 The miracle is a sign that the mind has chosen to be led by me in Christ’s service. The abundance of Christ is the natural result of choosing to follow Him. All shallow roots must be uprooted, because they are not deep enough to sustain you. The illusion that shallow roots can be deepened, and thus made to hold, is one of the distortions on which the reverse of the Golden Rule rests. As these false underpinnings are given up, the equilibrium is temporarily experienced as unstable. However, nothing is less stable than an upside-down orientation. Nor can anything that holds it upside down be conducive to increased stability.

Anything from ego is a shallow root that gives me an upside down perspective. There is no way that I can make this perspective better or make it work for me. For instance, let’s say that I am unhappy because something I did has come back to haunt me. I wish I had not done it because it is now affecting my life in a way I regret. I feel foolish and helpless.

The shallow root is that I would be happy if I made better choices, and another would be that I would be happy if only circumstances were different. I try to deepen the root by berating myself. Yes, that’s right, I think it would help if I fussed at myself and pointed out my errors, even piled on some guilt. The ego reasoning is that this way I won’t make that same mistake again.

Another way of deepening both roots is to learn enough to not make that same kind of mistake again, to get wiser and smarter and more experienced so that I don’t make those kinds of mistakes. I can read self-help books and practice spiritual concepts. It will probably help but it will never work all the time because there is no way I can know all I need to know to make better decisions. I would have to know everything about the situation, now and in the future and how it will affect everyone in a chain of events. That is not possible.

Something like this actually occurred last night, except it was someone else who did something that seemed to have a negative effect on my life at this time. It’s the same either way, another person or me, and my reaction was pretty much the same except directed outward. Suddenly, I had the thought that this person could not have acted any differently. This was their script. It is the same as the many times that I seemed to have made a mess of things; I could not have done things differently either.

How silly that I would find either of us guilty. What a waste of time to try to fix the world from within the world, or to expect the other person to do that. This did not happen from within the world and so it cannot be fixed there. That is the shallow root regardless of what form it seems to take.

It might seem to be that I am sick and so I go to the doctor and start taking medicine. I look the cause of the illness up on-line and see what I need to do to prevent this happening again. I change my lifestyle. This is the same shallow root. I think the body gets sick and I think I can make things better by changing what the body does or does not do. I think the problem is in the world and I can make things better by changing the world.

So last night as the truth began to dawn upon my mind, as I realized that it is perfectly silly and useless to think that someone should have acted differently than they did, I had to laugh at the idea of blame. How could I ever find anyone, even myself, guilty of playing out the script as it is written?  For a moment I felt as if the underpinnings of my world were loosened and I was free floating. It felt unnerving. But then as I allowed the Holy Spirit to help me see differently, my mind righted itself.

I asked what I was supposed to do in the world. If the script is written and I know it, am I supposed to just walk through my part, mouthing words? What is the point? The answer I received is that I am supposed to watch and remember. As I become detached from the meaning I have given life and stop trying to deepen shallow roots, I begin to use what is happening to remember the truth, just as I did last night.

I remembered the movie Inception. It has a lot of action, fighting, close calls, and a complex plot. When I watched it the first time, I noticed an underlying metaphysical meaning, but only in a general way. I was so caught up in the story that I missed a lot of the meaning. I watched it several times and as I did so, I lost interest in the adventure and was able to catch more of the less obvious storyline, the deeper hidden meanings.

This is how it is in life. As I take my eye off the outer story, stop paying attention to the shallow roots and stop trying to strengthen them, I am able to notice the underlying meaning. I am able to see what is really going on and work from that perspective. The first thing I had to do was to forgive the situation and the people involved. Its funny but once I forgive it I have to laugh because I can no longer see what there is to forgive.

From this more detached perspective I can ask the Holy Spirit to show me this in a different way. This works in my life just as it did in the movie, Inception. I lose interest in the cover story, the obvious plot, and I begin to notice the story behind the story. I start to remember who I really am and that the story is ancient and over long ago. I am just watching it unfold yet again, perhaps leaving bits on the cutting floor so that it becomes a shorter story, and shorter still the more awake to the truth I become.

That experience last night and many like it restore my mind to the peaceful state I have come to expect. That is no small thing in itself, but it also helps to awaken me from the belief in the story, and as it does so, it awakens the entire Sonship. Truth is spread throughout the entire mind, and this makes it easier for the next person who is ready for the truth. This is the miracle. The effects of a changed mind are the outward appearance of the inward miracle. The more willingness I give to the Holy Spirit to heal my mind, the more miracles I experience and the more abundant their effects.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of the Text 11-29-12

11-29-12
5 Whatever is true is eternal, and cannot change or be changed. Spirit is therefore unalterable because it is already perfect, but the mind can elect what it chooses to serve. The only limit put on its choice is that it cannot serve two masters. If it elects to do so, the mind can become the medium by which spirit creates along the line of its own creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains its creative potential but places itself under tyrannous rather than Authoritative control. As a result it imprisons, because such are the dictates of tyrants. To change your mind means to place it at the disposal of true Authority.

What I can’t change:
I am eternal Spirit, unalterably perfect.

What I can’t do:
I can’t serve two masters.

What I can do:
I can choose the master I would serve.
1. Choose to follow God and create along the lines of spirit.
2. Choose to follow ego and retain creative ability but imprison the mind so that it can only pretend or make, but not create.

I have (or am?) this perfect, powerful, unlimited and unalterable creative mind. I can create love, and peace, and joy in as many ways as I can think to, and because I am boundless, there is no end to the ways I can imagine creation. Because I am free and have no boundaries I can even play at making something outside of creation. And this is what I have done.

I have used the incredible power of my mind to voluntarily imprison a part of it, setting up limits so that I could pretend to be other than I am. I call this part of mind, ego.  From this little bit of mind I have made a world of separation with all its effects, intended and unintended. I doubt I understood the tyrannous nature of a mind so bound, how lost I would be in it, how fearful and guilty.

Though perhaps I have for awhile enjoyed the delicious tingle of fright and the powerful surges of adrenaline. And surely, I have enjoyed the highs and lows of emotions surging through the body, the ache of sexual desire and its physical release. Can anything equal the tender regard of mother and baby, newly born? Most assuredly so, but I cannot remember what that is.

And that’s the rub. I am truly lost here in my storyland, and the guilt and fear seem all too real. For it is the nature of the experience that I be wholly and completely in its thrall, otherwise it is an idea, a concept but never fully realized. This ego is a tyrant for sure, and has no desire to die quietly, but wants to keep me engrossed with offers of more of its dubious adventures and promises of a false freedom.

The Holy Spirit speaks for God and gently leads us out of this unlikely kingdom we have made. As we listen to His loving Voice we see a glimmer of the truth, a bit of light, and we start to remember that a thousand choices offered by ego are choices between nothing and nothing. Long before the mind remembers its longing, the Heart feels it and we find a book or a teacher and we begin to make the only choice we truly have, the one between masters.

In a bid to keep our loyalty, the ego, using the only tools at its disposal (fear and guilt) warns us that we slipped away from God in the dark of night, stealing from Him what was His, leaving Him diminished. The ego says that we dare not go back. It warns that such a betrayal could not be without consequence. It’s a scary lie, but still a lie.

When we had the curious thought that we should try making a world different than truth, our loving Creator placed within the mind a reminder, a fail-safe. This Voice was placed there to comfort us when we got in too deep and experienced hurt. He placed within our mind a Light to keep the darkness from hiding our truth too completely, a Guide to bring us home when we tired of our games.

We did not sneak off from God, we did not hurt God, and we are not guilty and have nothing to fear from Love. If we are hearing that Voice and feeling its call to return home, it is only because we are through with play. We are making a choice for God, for Reality. It is time, we have decided, to place our mind under true Authority.

In making the choice for God, we are beginning to realize that the tyrant, the ego,  has no real power over us. We are the maker of the tyrant and cannot be controlled by it except if we make that choice. “This is what I have done, Holy Spirit. Please undo what I have done.” It’s that simple, and the consequences of choosing a true Master are not dire as we are warned by ego, but are glorious!

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of the Text 10-28-12

11-28-12
4 Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return. The miracle calls him to return because it blesses and honors him, even though he may be absent in spirit. “God is not mocked” is not a warning but a reassurance. God would be mocked if any of His creations lacked holiness. The creation is whole, and the mark of wholeness is holiness. Miracles are affirmations of Sonship, which is a state of completion and abundance.

First let me say what a delight it was to read that, “God is not mocked” is not a warning but a reassurance. It makes me laugh when I read that. I used to think of it as a warning and it was one of those phrases from the Bible that encouraged my fear of God. I mean, what was I supposed to do with that? How was I mocking Him and how was I to stop? What would He do to me if I accidentally mocked Him? Life used to be a lot scarier before I found the Course.

It also helped me to understand that my perception determines how I understand things. “God is not mocked” goes from being a warning to being a reassurance without any change to the words. The Holy Spirit helped me to see that I am not yet completely free of fear when I think of God, but I am moving in that direction. I am much closer to knowing that He is Love and nothing else, than I used to be. I have touched that love, just a gentle brush with reality, but it made a difference.

“Thank You, God, that You are not mocked.” There is nothing I can do to change the nature of God, or of His creation. I am holy because God created me like Himself. I will never be anything but holy and so, ultimately, I will return to Him. I will acknowledge my holiness and laugh at the absurdity that I could have been a body in a world of separation, that I could have suffered and died.

I was watching a clip by Jan Frazier this morning. She said a couple of things that were helpful to me. First she reminded me that there is only now. I hear this from other people too, and I think I have failed to see just how important that is. Just this moment, this is all there is. In each moment I can say the same thing. I am just beginning to understand that eternity is in this moment. She said: All that’s real is here right now.

The other thing that was helpful: No thought can cause you pain unless you’re having it right now. I had to laugh when I read that. It is so true and so obvious and yet, I never really noticed it before. Right now is the only thing that is here and if I am experiencing pain it is because of a thought I am having right now. What if I were wrong about that thought? What if it were only a matter of perception?

And if that thought is causing me pain then I must be mistaken in my perception, because God did not create pain and God will not be mocked. Do you see where this is leading me? In the moment when I acknowledge my error and truly accept that pain is not real, in that moment I am resting in the Heart of God, perfectly safe and at peace. That moment is all there is until I have a thought that is not in accord with Truth, and then I imagine myself outside God. That can’t happen, but I can think it happened, and it becomes my experience.

My heart is racing as I think of this. Will I ever awaken, I sometimes wonder. I have often awakened. I have had moments, some of them strung together to make it seem like a longer time, when I have been awakened. I knew the truth in that moment and that moment was all there was until I made another choice, but for that moment I proved that I can be in God, and am in God.

What a strange game I play as I peek into Heaven and then return to separation. Or maybe I peek from Heaven and into separation? It only seems that I live in separation because I seem to stay in that state for such a longer time, but then, time is an illusion, too. What if I already am a fully awakened and infinite being, playing at being human from time to time, and ultimately I will return my full attention to Love?

I have played at being simply human, and played at separation. Now I play at miracles. The difference is that the former takes me more deeply into the illusion, while miracles remind me of my Reality and call to me to return to Wholeness. What miracles would you have me perform today, Spirit?

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of the Text 11-27-12

11-27-12
3 When the Atonement has been completed, all talents will be shared by all the Sons of God. God is not partial. All His children have His total Love, and all His gifts are freely given to everyone alike. “Except ye become as little children” means that unless you fully recognize your complete dependence on God, you cannot know the real power of the Son in his true relationship with the Father. The specialness of God’s Sons does not stem from exclusion but from inclusion. All my brothers are special. If they believe they are deprived of anything, their perception becomes distorted. When this occurs the whole family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships.

Two things stand out for me in this paragraph. The first is that I am special because I am one with my brothers who are special. I lack nothing. I have every gift of God there is to have. Sometimes I know this is true. I know that the world I experience is not what I am. I know that I am part of God and in God and want for nothing. When it seems I do not, that is because I have become identified with Myron, that is, with the idea of a separated self.

As a separated self, I seem to be different from my brothers, each of us having certain gifts, and of course, someone else seems to have the gift I really want and really long for. This is an attack, an attack on myself because now I feel less than, and so no longer special in my wholeness. It is an attack on my brother because I envy him and want what I think belongs to him. I want what he has so that I can feel special in my separation.

I have always longed to express myself creatively. I long to sing but it seems my part is to listen and appreciate. I long to paint, but I can only enjoy what others paint. Why can I not be given an incredible book like A Course in Miracles, or The Holy Spirit’s Interpretation of the New Testament? I want to wake up and live the rest of this life from that perspective the way others are doing. I want to have what Byron Katie has, and what Jan Frazier has. The list of special talents and gifts that I feel deprived of is too long to list here

Jesus is telling me that I am deprived of nothing and when I think I am, my perception becomes distorted, and I can see that it does. When I think I lack something someone else has that thought is a distortion and leads to further distortion such as feeling unloved and uncared for. Why do I not have what they have, is the underlying question and the answer seems to be that I must not be worthy.

The world as I see it now, from the point of view of Myron, is splintered. Some have and some have not, but this is not the truth. The world is not the truth. I can be Myron for awhile, and probably I have tried on many roles, but they are temporary parts to be played and lain aside. In truth, I am One with all my brothers, and there is nothing we do not share.

The second thing that stands out is the idea of being as a child, being completely dependent on God. I practice this as I surrender my day-to-day decisions, as I lay aside my plans and ask, “What would You have me do, now?” I practice becoming empty of self so that I can be lived. I laugh at myself when I say this because I am being lived whether I surrender to it or not. It is a distortion of perception to think Myron is in control and making things happen.

I want to consciously let go of the idea that I am in control. I want to relax into God and be happy to be led. I want to let go of all resistance to the idea that to surrender means to lose. This morning before I began my study, I asked Spirit to take me to God, as I have been doing for several days now. My mind wandered all over the place and finally I let go of trying.

Holy Spirit helped me to see that this is resistance, this mind wandering. The distractions of the mind are simply a defense against God, designed to keep me separate and in the distorted perception of ego, safe from God. Ego does not want to give up its “independence” from God. As if it could ever be independent of God! What would I lose if I surrendered to my Truth? Unhappiness? Loss? Suffering and death? I ask myself why I struggle so hard to maintain my pretense of being separate from my God.

What would I gain if I let go of my fierce grip on this pretense? Everything.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of the Text 11-26-12

11-26-12
2 The basic decision of the miracle-minded is not to wait on time any longer than is necessary. Time can waste as well as be wasted. The miracle worker, therefore, accepts the time-control factor gladly. He recognizes that every collapse of time brings everyone closer to the ultimate release from time, in which the Son and Father are one. Equality does not imply equality now. When everyone recognizes that he has everything, individual contributions to the Sonship will no longer be necessary.

This morning I read something Regina Dawn Akers wrote about not wasting time. This is what she said.

It seems I remember something from the UrText of A Course in Miracles where Jesus sent Helen to a specific store to find and buy a specific coat. This directed shopping saved time, so she could spend more time with Jesus scribing the Course and less time going from store to store looking for a coat.

I find the same guidance in my life. When I am surrendered and asking, “What am I to do now,” I am led efficiently from one thing to the other. When I am not surrendered, my mind comes up with ideas about what to do that wastes time.

With surrender, I accomplish more of what needs to be done and I have more time for focused spiritual contemplation and meditation. Without surrender, more time is wasted in activities that accomplish nothing meaningful (e.g., too much time on Facebook looking at nothing.)

It seems the intuition that answers us when we ask, “What am I to do now?” guides for our best interest and ultimate satisfaction. By listening to it, time is used wisely. We will notice the effects of this wise use of time; there’s a feeling of being in the flow, in harmony with all things.

That was a helpful reminder from Regina. I often ask for guidance and then sometimes I fall out of the habit and try to make all my own decisions. There is a huge difference in the flow of my life. It is always a waste of time when I do this. I did this when I spent nearly all of Friday shopping and got almost nothing done except to wear myself out. I didn’t ask for guidance at all, just decided it was the thing to do. I was wrong. It seems that every so often I have to try life on my own just to be sure it really is better if I make no plans and no decisions on my own.

Another way I use this idea of time control is that I use every situation as an opportunity to heal the mind. For instance, like many people I spent the last several days eating Thanksgiving deserts. I don’t generally eat many sweets, and when I do eat them I eat without guilt and with enjoyment. However, when I eat like I did this weekend, in the past I have had a hard time stopping. Its like when I get started eating sweets I can’t stop.

What I normally do is tough it through by spending a few days backing slowly off the sweets, eating fewer every day, to finally stop altogether. This works for me, but doing this is teaching myself something that is not true. I spend those two or three days feeling anxious and out of control. I doubt myself and feel victimized by my bad habit.

I become afraid that this time I will not be able to stop eating sweets, as if the craving for sweets has nothing to do with me and it just falls from the sky and attacks me. When I do this I am teaching myself that I am a body and the body is the decision maker. This is not a lesson I want to teach myself or anyone else.

What I do now is that I accept responsibility for my eating habits, and for the strong craving for sweets. I did this and I can undo it. I enjoyed the banana pudding and as much of the fudge as I wanted, then I told the Holy Spirit that I wanted to go back to eating normally. I enjoy not feeling attached to food and not feeling controlled by appetite. I asked for His help. When I woke up the next morning I had no desire for deserts or heavy meals. The leftovers are sitting in the fridge and I don’t feel to eat them.

Eating or not eating is not the issue, though I am happy with the way things are now. The issue is that I am using this situation to be taught the truth. I am using it to help the Sonship wake up to It’s Reality. This is a good use of time. It’s the only good use of time that I can see, and it is very satisfying to me to use time in this way. Definitely more satisfying than a piece of fudge. No, really. ~smile~

We do have work to do here. There is effort that is required. I know the text tells us that we need do nothing, but Jesus is talking about healing of the mind when he says this. We need do nothing to accomplish healing except to want the healing. However, it sometimes takes great effort to get to a place where we want the healing more than we want the problem.

In this way we are not all equal at this time. Some of us have done more work or have more quickly accepted the truth. I am grateful to those who have stepped forward and done what needed to be done. They do not heal for themselves alone, but for all of us. Because of what they have done, we are all much closer to awakening, and the work I must do is much easier now. The mind is not as deeply asleep now so it is not as hard for me to change my mind. Also, I look at those who walk ahead of me and I see that they did it so I feel encouraged that I can do so as well.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of the Text 11-24-12

11-24-12
V. Wholeness and Spirit

1 The miracle is much like the body in that both are learning aids for facilitating a state in which they become unnecessary. When spirit’s original state of direct communication is reached, neither the body nor the miracle serves any purpose. While you believe you are in a body, however, you can choose between loveless and miraculous channels of expression. You can make an empty shell, but you cannot express nothing at all. You can wait, delay, paralyze yourself, or reduce your creativity almost to nothing. But you cannot abolish it. You can destroy your medium of communication, but not your potential. You did not create yourself.

After reading this paragraph I can only say, “Thank you, God, for the nature of my creation.” I am so grateful that I can refuse to use my creativity, but I cannot destroy it. I can be in a state of denial, but denial does not change me. Since I did not create myself, I cannot make myself different.  I can only pretend to be different.

The body is the symbol of the change I am pretending to be. Used by the Holy Spirit, it becomes the learning aid that helps me return my mind to Reality. I watch my mind for thoughts that seem unlike Reality. I notice my body’s changes and see that it cannot be part of Reality, because Reality does not change.

I use the body to communicate or to block communication and I see something else that needs healing. I notice that my mind is obsessed with the body and its needs as if I am this thing, and so I see another lesson to be learned. The body is quite the classroom. When the lessons have all been learned, when the body is seen for what it is and when I have learned to use it only for communication, I will no longer need it, nor want it.

The miracle is the way I reach this new understanding and eventually leave behind the world I see. As I notice these things, as I notice the use to which I put the body and ask that my mind be corrected of these mistaken beliefs, the miracle heals the mind.  The healed mind no longer imagines lack of love and so no longer projects its distorted vision onto the world.

As ever greater numbers of us are healed and the miracle transforms the world it will become what it was meant to be, and for awhile we will enjoy our little experiment as a happy dream. How lovely the world will seem without pain and suffering, greed and selfishness, and all the effects of guilt and fear that do not in reality exist, but that we continue to animate through our belief that we need them.

I know that this is going to happen because it is beginning to happen now. I see it in my own life and in the lives of others. I had an example of that this morning. I was more active yesterday than usual and when I woke up instead of feeling revived and refreshed, I felt draggy and achy. But I couldn’t sustain that illusion because I have spent a lot of time remembering that the body is not sick, or tired. What happens is that the mind creates these states and then projects them onto the body.

I have asked for healing of the mind often enough that I can no longer stay in pain like I used to. I didn’t think about it a lot. I just noticed the discomfort and had the thought that pain is not real. Then I went about my business and at some point realized that all the false symptoms were gone. They cannot exist without my active participation.

As I write this I notice a pain in my neck that has been very persistent. I don’t seem willing to let it go, and I don’t allow the reason for this reluctance to rise to the surface of my mind. But I do trust. I trust that everything that appears in my life is there to support my awakening and when I have used it for that purpose it will leave. I trust myself to be awakened enough to desire healing and to allow the miracle to manifest in perfect timing.

It has been my experience so far that as my mind heals, my world changes. Sometimes it is the way I see the world, and sometimes it appears as an actual change, such as it did with some of the physical healings I have experienced. Another way I see the effects of a healed mind is the ease in which I live. I need something and there it is.

Sometimes I did not consciously know I needed it until it showed up. I need help and someone volunteers. I need a solution to a problem and am inspired with the answer. A long time grievance is simply dropped as if magically removed from my mind, and of course, it is not magic, but it’s opposite; it is a miracle.

I am not in conscious control of the miracle. I do my part in being vigilant for the need for healing and accepting the change of mind it brings. I observe with wonder and delight as the miracle makes itself known, but I don’t try to direct it. When that desire enters my mind I know it is the ego trying to gain control it thinks it lost. It never had control so there is nothing to be gained.

Just as the body is here for as long as needed, the miracle, too, is only temporary. When I fully accept my true Self, I will have no need for miracles. For now, however, I am so grateful for them.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of the Text 11-23-12

11-22-12
4 The emptiness engendered by fear must be replaced by forgiveness. That is what the Bible means by “There is no death,” and why I could demonstrate that death does not exist. I came to fulfill the law by reinterpreting it. The law itself, if properly understood, offers only protection. It is those who have not yet changed their minds who brought the “hell-fire” concept into it. I assure you that I will witness for anyone who lets me, and to whatever extent he permits it. Your witnessing demonstrates your belief, and thus strengthens it. Those who witness for me are expressing, through their miracles, that they have abandoned the belief in deprivation in favor of the abundance they have learned belongs to them.

Its strange to think of fear as emptiness, as nothing. Fear seems so big and so overwhelming. When I was afraid for my son, fear felt so big that I couldn’t, for awhile, feel anything else. It was like it filled me up and nothing else could fit. When I think of being on a mountain, of driving around it and not being able to see what is coming toward me from the other side, or especially to think of driving and coming to a switchback and having that sensation of driving right off into air before the sharp turn that allows me to hug the mountain again, well the fear is huge.

Just writing about it I feel my stomach tighten and I want to cry. This fear is even worse because it doesn’t make sense and I don’t know what to do with it, how to let it go. It makes it seem like fear is bigger than God because so far I have not been able to give it over to Spirit and let it be healed. And here is Jesus saying that fear is nothing. Where I think that monstrous fear sits in the dark place in my mind, there is only… emptiness? How strange.

I have not yet been able to replace that particular fear with forgiveness. Maybe I will not in this lifetime do that, or maybe I will do it in a few minutes. I trust that this process is unfolding perfectly. At some point I will forgive the fear of heights, which evidently is really the fear of death. Jesus showed (witnessed to me) that death is not real. He overcame death for himself and for me. Perhaps all fear is the fear of death in some way. Speaking of fear, Jesus also reassures us that the scary parts of religion are only the result of interpretations by frightened people. When I first read that it was a great relief.

Jesus uses the language of Christianity in the Course, sometimes redefining certain terms as he did with the word “forgiveness.” Since I was not raised Protestant, at first I was confused by the word “witness” as used here. I looked it up in the dictionary and it said that that to witness is to testify to Christian beliefs, and this is done publicly. I read some passages from the Bible, which didn’t enlighten me especially. But thinking about what I read there and how my protestant friends typically use the word witness, I gather that to witness is to say aloud how God has worked in your life for the purpose of spreading the word.

I was thinking how this applies to witnessing through miracles. As I perform miracles I show others that healing the mind works and this encourages and motivates them to do the work for themselves. When I read the articles that Nouk Sanchez wrote (http://undoing-the-ego.org/noukblog/?p=212) in which she described two mind healing miracles that manifested in form as well, I was inspired. It helped me realize that I was on the right path and encouraged me to continue my own work. Both miracles perfectly expressed that she chose to abandon the belief in deprivation in favor of the abundance she has learned belong to her.

I can tell you that my life has changed because of my belief in Jesus, but if I show you that I am consistently happier and more peaceful, if you see my life change for the better, my witnessing will be more powerful. I used to be depressed all the time. I am never depressed now. I used to get angry a lot. I get angry very seldom now and when I do it passes quickly.

I used to blame others and outside circumstances for what happened to me and I felt sorry for myself a lot. I rarely feel or act like a victim now and readily accept responsibility for everything in my world. When someone notices those changes in me (or even if they don’t know how different this is) and they ask me how it happens, I gladly add words to my witnessing, and of course, I witness through my writing and teaching.

Jesus says that he will witness for anyone who lets him, and to whatever extent he permits it. He whispers in my heart the truth when I ask for it. A few days ago I started asking Spirit to take me to God, and then spending a few moments in that space. I did not have any expectations as to what that might look like to me, but just did it in trust. Yesterday on Thanksgiving morning, when I asked, something happened on a conscious level.

I have a hard time finding words to match the experience, and I don’t want to explain it into something it was not. That’s so easy to do when I use the thinking mind. But very briefly, I seemed to have a fleeting thought of wondering what God is. I felt enormous power and maybe flinched from it. Then felt love; love like a mighty river flowing endlessly, a constant current of love. Harmless. I cried uncontrollably for a few minutes.

Afterwards I wondered at my reaction, and when I would think of God as benign, nonthreatening, and harmless, I would start crying again. Thinking about it, I believe that Spirit witnessed to me. It was done in feelings rather than words, and the feelings were evoked through me. It was as if Jesus were saying, “Before I can bring you to God, I must show you that you are afraid of Him, and allow you to let go of that fear. We can’t do it all at once, but we can touch on it a little this morning.” So maybe this is the kind of thing that Jesus means when he says he witnesses to us as much as we allow.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Page 1 of 3 pages  1 2 3 > 

<< Back to main page of Together, We Light the Way

Has this page been helpful to you?
Your contribution to support this site is greatly appreciated. To make a tax deductible contribution with a credit/debit card, click here.
Click here to donate from your PayPal account.
Or send a check to Pathways of Light, 12530 Lions Chase Court, Huntley, IL 60142.