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Study of the Text 4-5-13

4-5-13
5 Nothing can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the Hands of his Father. By doing this the mind awakens from its sleep and remembers its Creator. All sense of separation disappears. The Son of God is part of the Holy Trinity, but the Trinity Itself is one. There is no confusion within Its Levels, because They are of one Mind and one Will. This single purpose creates perfect integration and establishes the peace of God. Yet this vision can be perceived only by the truly innocent. Because their hearts are pure, the innocent defend true perception instead of defending themselves against it. Understanding the lesson of the Atonement they are without the wish to attack, and therefore they see truly. This is what the Bible means when it says, “When he shall appear (or be perceived) we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

It doesn’t really matter if I understand the Holy Trinity so I won’t dwell on that part. But I did find it interesting that he speaks of it as “They” and “levels” and perfect integration, which establishes the peace of God. He says it’s their single purpose that does this. This feels different than the idea of One that I have had.

The One is a They. Also, the “single purpose” attracted my attention because the Course emphasizes that we must join in a single purpose, and I now see why. The Holy Trinity are in perfect agreement within Itself. They share a single purpose. This is the peace of God. When we, you and I, share a single purpose we experience a holy instant and the practice brings us to the memory of the peace of God.

I do not experience the peace of God even though it exists uninterrupted by my dream of separation, because only the innocent remember peace. As long as I perceive guilt, I am blind to what is in me and all around me.  This brings us to the part of this paragraph that is of greatest interest to me, because it is something I can understand and use. Guilt is the block that keeps me from the awareness of who and what I am. It keeps me from awakening. Guilt keeps me from remembering my Creator.  So allowing guilt to be undone in my mind is my purpose while I imagine I am here.

The first sentence, “Nothing can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the Hands of his Father,” brought tears of relief to my eyes. As it echoes Jesus’ final surrender to His Creator, it awakens the desire within me to surrender. It reminds me that surrender to God is not a sacrifice. Surrender to my Father is an act of strength. If you think it does not take strength, try it while in the throes of an ego storm, while deeply mired in fear. And you need only do this once to know there is no sacrifice, but quite the opposite. To go from terror to peace in a single moment is not sacrifice.

Jesus says, the innocent defend true perception instead of defending themselves against it. I have a current example of this. Last night my daughter was upset and feeling very hurt. If it were myself that was feeling hurt and upset, I would move more easily into surrender, but when it is my kids, I have a harder time with it. I still do the work, but it takes me longer to get past the appearance and to the truth.

Within my mind was a true perception of the situation, but standing before me was my precious daughter who was apparently in pain. The part of the situation that was encouraging is that I recognized all of the ego thoughts for what they were. I felt bad (guilty) because I could not fix her problem. I felt helpless (guilty) because I did not know what to say and all of my wisdom was useless because she doesn’t believe in it.

I saw my mind going constantly to the world looking for a way to fix this problem. Boy, was there ever the desire to find a way to manipulate the world so that it was kinder to my daughter! I recognized this for what it was; defending against true perception, and so let it go each time. I guess the strongest defense against true perception was my belief that something was wrong and I needed to do something about it.

True perception showed me a daughter who was experiencing her wishes, and from that experience moving closer to awakening to the peace of God, but instead of defending that perception, I kept defending against it by sinking into her fear and believing in that. I also noticed that her fears triggered the same fears in me, fears I thought I had let go long ago.

All the time this was happening and later when I got home and sat with it, I was asking for the Atonement in this situation. I said that I accepted it, and yet I stayed in fear and uncertainty. Finally, I just gave in and cried about all the things that this situation brought up for me. I heard myself say, “This is how these thoughts make me feel.” Then I realized my error.

At first I was asking for the Atonement, but what I really wanted was to feel better. I was still defending against true perception and was not interested in letting go of what I believed. I was asking out of fear, or another way to say it, I was asking Jesus to take my fear away. He tells us that he cannot do this.

But he also says he can help us with the beliefs that cause the fear. Obviously, though, I will have to stop defending against him doing this, that is, I will have to be willing to let go of the beliefs that are causing the fear. This is when I become willing to commend (surrender for safekeeping) my Spirit to God. This is the moment of trust and faith.

The reason crying and telling Jesus how I felt was so helpful to me is that it was the moment I stopped trying to heal myself and really surrendered the problem. The Course says that we need to look at our thoughts with the Holy Spirit and let Him heal us. Before that moment I was trying to bypass the part where I really looked at them. I was apparently telling myself that I could just jump right to the healing without looking. I had looked in an intellectual way, but I didn’t want to feel the pain. Kind of like looking at a mess from a distance so I didn’t get my hands dirty. ~smile~

That moment of crying and really acknowledging how it feels to believe the ego (and so support the belief in guilt) and then asking for healing was what was required of me to truly receive the healing. I went from saying, “Yuck, this is awful. Take it away,” to saying, “Here is what it feels like to believe this false idea. I see this is not something I want to keep believing. Please heal my mind.” It seems a subtle difference but it is very different.

From a healed perspective I lost all desire to attack. I did not see the world as guilty of hurting my child and so I did not want to “attack” the problem in the world. I remembered the simple truth and now I hold that truth for her. I am defending true perception and no longer defending against it. Whew! It feels so freeing. Thank you, God. I love you, God.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 4-4-13

4-1-13
4 You are afraid of God’s Will because you have used your own mind, which He created in the likeness of His Own, to miscreate. The mind can miscreate only when it believes it is not free. An “imprisoned” mind is not free because it is possessed, or held back, by itself. It is therefore limited, and the will is not free to assert itself. To be one is to be of one mind or will. When the Will of the Sonship and the Father are one, their perfect accord is Heaven.

A Metaphorical Fable

As I read this paragraph I imagine myself as an unlimited being wondering what it would be like if I were not unlimited. Visually, I imagine Self as existing in every direction with no ending. (Yes, I know, there is no direction outside the illusion, but bear with me here. I am working from within the limitations imposed by the illusion as I do this.) So here I am, existing everywhere at the same time and in my desire to imagine something different, I draw a box around a small part of Self and pretend there is nothing outside the box.

Ok, now I have set my parameters and I can allow the experience to unfold. And, oh boy, does it unfold! There are quickly billions of little boxes within the box and within each of the tiny boxes experiences unfold and unfold and unfold. Organic is a word that comes to me. Changing and shifting and growing into something I had perhaps not anticipated. As it gets out of hand I begin to feel something entirely new to me. I begin to feel claustrophobic. How could I be so small? This can’t be right. What have I done? This new feeling is guilt and it is followed closely with fear.

I decide the best thing to do is to hide out in the strange and awful world I have made until I figure out what to do. There are so many new experiences and if I focus on them I can temporarily forget how small and confined I feel in this little box. I can also forget the guilt and fear. But now that guilt and fear are in this mind of mine, I see it everywhere within my little prison.

Guilt and fear and all its effects are the stuff of “creation,” the material I use to build this world, so to speak. As I think of what I have “created” I feel more fear because deeply buried in my mind is the certainty that this is not creation at all, and the fear is that to create outside God is defiance. Yikes!

I use it to make a world filled with guilty people doing guilty things and isn’t that handy. “Look, God, it was him. His behavior is so much worse than mine. Punish him.” My world is so far out of reality now that I have forgotten who I am and who God is and even that I am not really imprisoned at all, just thinking about all this.

If it were real, all would be lost, but it cannot be real.  Remember, all that happened is that I wondered what it would be like. My wondering took the form of drawing a box around an unlimited Self and within that box allowing a world of impossibilities to grow. But it is still only wondering, imagination, pretend –like.  I am not guilty of anything and there is nothing to be afraid of. In fact there is no guilt and no fear except in my little box.

There is an escape route, of course, a way out and a Guide to help me find it. I cannot be held captive to my imagination. My captivity is part of my play and is self-imposed. The feeling of being trapped, of feeling cramped within my story is the awakening of the memory of who I am. The path out is one small step at a time which seems to take forever, but what is time to an eternal being? And remember, we are utterly free, and it is only a thought within this holy mind that we are, which imagines imprisonment.

I used to envision the path out as being lovely white stones, one in front of the other, going on and on, out of sight. I just trusted that they would lead me Home. I saw myself studying and practicing and with each effort moving forward to the next stone. Now I see it a little differently. I see that the path is made up of two stones side by side. One for each foot? No, silly, one for me and one for you. We go home hand in hand.

Our imagination made a world of separate beings and to undo this world we must rejoin. In the world of illusion that looks like me and you recognizing that we are in agreement on a single thing. I was mad at you and you were feeling offended. Still separate. I am getting a glimmer of the path out and that I want out.

I decide that more than I want you to be wrong, I want to be free of this confining existence. I accept the Atonement in this situation and Love heals my mind. I take your hand and we move forward a step. We don’t care about the disagreement anymore. We don’t care who is right or who is wrong. We don’t even need someone else to be guilty and so the entire situation shifts. Instead of standing in fear and guilt, our willingness, our true desire, drew us together and forward.

It is so simple that the mind mired in complexity tends to overlook it. But practice has brought it to the forefront of my mind and now it occurs to me more and more often. Each time I make that simple and obvious choice, I get closer to Heaven. As we make this journey we are preparing our minds for the ultimate undoing, the moment we take God’s Hand (metaphorically speaking) and the memory bubble bursts.

The world we made and all the dramas and the pain and suffering we take so seriously dissolve like a dream on awakening. How we will laugh to realize we did this to our selves, and that we did nothing at all. We were not taking a journey to Heaven, we were remembering that where God and His Son join, Heaven is. We could never have been separate from God because that is not His Will or Ours. We were only dreaming of separation and the dream is over.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 4-3-13

4-3-13
3 When you lack confidence in what someone will do, you are attesting to your belief that he is not in his right mind. This is hardly a miracle-based frame of reference. It also has the disastrous effect of denying the power of the miracle. The miracle perceives everything as it is. If nothing but the truth exists, right-minded seeing cannot see anything but perfection. I have said that only what God creates or what you create with the same Will has any real existence. This, then, is all the innocent can see. They do not suffer from distorted perception.

For the last two days I have had an experience of lacking confidence in what someone will do. A friend has been sick and I have experienced confusion about it. In my mind I have had thoughts about what she is doing wrong, about what she is thinking that is wrong. Then I would want to school her and get her back on the right track. I would want to use whatever means I could to bring her to good health. I was tempted to use guilt, to make her feel wrong so she would change her behavior.

Even as all of this was going through my mind, I knew it was not right-minded thinking and that it meant I was an unhealed healer. I had prayed for her, but I was now the one in need of healing. For a while I was in that uncomfortable place where I knew I needed a change of mind but was having trouble taking my eye off the thing that scared me. I was in conflict and conflict causes fear, and fear causes confusion.

So here is what I did. Since I was now the unhealed healer, I asked for help. I opened myself to the Atonement and asked that Love heal my mind. Then I asked that I be guided to right-minded words and actions. I was told to just focus on love and anything I needed to say or do would come through me. I felt immediate peace and it was such a relief. I’m not used to being in confusion anymore and have little tolerance for it.

The next thing that happened is that I began to feel the love I have for my friend. This was real love that believed in her and trusted her. It was love without fear and judgment. I felt a strong desire to tell my friend how much I love her, so I acted on that guidance and called her. I felt kind of silly just calling out of nowhere and telling her that I love her very much and just wanted her to know. But I knew I was supposed to.

I did feel awkward at first, but she responded positively and it was a short but loving conversation. In that moment she and I joined in perfect agreement on this one thing. It was a holy instant. Later her caretaker told me she was responding better today. I felt like it was our shared moment of allowing love that changed things.

Of course the ego mind thought it was responsible and started thinking of things it could do to keep the momentum going. I recognized this for what it was and brought the desire to “do” something to the Holy Spirit. I received another strong message. It said, “When you think about her clear your mind of everything except love.” Well, ok. The ego hates not having anything to decide and nothing to do, but it makes me feel very peaceful to follow this guidance.

So this morning as I read this paragraph I realize that I just went through a practice of regaining confidence in my friend through the healing of my own mind. It’s funny when I think of it, to realize that I thought she needed to see things differently and all along it was me that needed a change of mind.

How will it turn out for my friend? Will her body heal? I don’t know. I don’t know how her story will unfold or where her lessons will take her. I don’t feel upset about that, nor am I suffering from the misconception that I know how it needs to happen. I trust her and I trust the Guide that gently plans each step of our way home.

I trust that she is healed and that she will accept her healing when she is ready for it. Just because she has not accepted it today, or even in this lifetime, does not in any way alter the healing. It seems my only job is to love her and to trust in the miracle that has occurred through our love. If I allow lack of trust to obscure the miracle again, I will simply ask for healing of my mind.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 4-2-13

4-2-13
2 Innocence is not a partial attribute. It is not real until it is total. The partly innocent are apt to be quite foolish at times. It is not until their innocence becomes a viewpoint with universal application that it becomes wisdom. Innocent or true perception means that you never misperceive and always see truly. More simply, it means that you never see what does not exist, and always see what does.

When I read this paragraph I felt a longing for innocence to be total, to look at innocence no matter what seems to be happening. I felt a prayer rise up in me, but I also felt sadness, because I feel like I am so far from this goal. Nothing is beautiful when I project guilt on it and I do this so often. One of the things I have been doing lately to help me choose differently is to call it guilt when it is guilt.

Here is an example of what I mean. I hear myself say, “If only I could see innocence everywhere.” Then I say what I really mean. “I am guilty of seeing what does not exist.” Now that I see the error clearly, I can ask that Love heal me of the belief in guilt. Here is another one. “I wish my friend were not sick.” What I am really saying is that my friend is guilty of making me feel bad. Could that be true? I look at it without flinching and I see that it is.

I see that if I continue to believe in guilt, I will see guilt everywhere. It is like I wear “guilt glasses” so that it is not possible to see anything through them without also seeing guilt. Wearing guilt glasses every time I see someone with breathing problems I will wonder if they smoke, or to say this more honestly, I will wonder if that person is guilty of smoking and causing the problem.

Wearing these glasses, I read the paper and I think how awful, how sad, how ridiculous. I hear about a politician making choices I can’t understand and I wonder if he took a bribe, or if he is just self-serving. Every thought that expresses a wish that things were different than they are is an expression of guilt. It is a wish for someone or some thing to be guilty.

It starts to feel overwhelming. How do I stop thinking like this? How do I stop finding everyone and everything guilty? Recognizing that it is not this person or that thing that is the problem is the first step. For instance, my friend who is sick is not the problem. It is the belief in guilt that is the problem. While I believe in guilt, seeing her sick makes me fearful and so it seems to be her fault I feel so bad.

Without guilt my friend is sick. I give her my attention, my prayers, my love. I notice any thoughts that this is real and ask that my mind be healed so I can continue to be helpful to her. With guilt someone is to blame. Without guilt, the story continues to unfold and I use each moment as an opportunity to be the love that I am. Without guilt all moments are peaceful. With guilt, all moments are a battle. It is not the moment that is a problem. It is the guilt.

Here is what I am doing now. I notice that I am blaming myself or someone else or some situation. I know this must be a mistake because there is only innocence. There is only God and God is not guilty, so there cannot be anything but innocence. If I see something besides innocence there is a need for the Atonement. I open my mind and invite Love to enter. I ask that Love heal my mind of anything that is not like Itself.

The mind that believes in guilt and values guilt will not want to accept this. It will want to make exceptions so that it can hold onto guilt. It will want to say that my friend is not doing everything she can to help herself get well. It will say that the politician really is unscrupulous and that there is proof this is true. This ego mind that loves separation and specialness will cling to its judgments and find many uses for guilt.

I will disregard them all. No exceptions, no excuses; just innocence no matter what. How do I respond? With love, no matter what. What do I do when I notice the desire to judge and to find guilty? I forgive it. I forgive myself. I forgive my projections. I do this by accepting the Atonement, by accepting the healing power of Love. It is simple.

Every time I do this, I wipe another smudge of guilt off my glasses and I see things differently. I see more clearly. I see love instead of guilt because love was there all the time; it was simply obscured by the belief in guilt. As the belief in guilt is healed, the ego’s effort to convince me that guilt has a place and is justified becomes ridiculous.

I know this is true because right now I look through partially cleaned glasses, so I know what it looks like to see the world without guilt laid over it. But there is still enough guilt smears on my glasses that I have to squint to find that clear field of vision.  No problem. It just means there are plenty of opportunities to accept the Atonement and all that is needed is the willingness to do it. I am willing.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 4-1-13

4-1-13
II. Miracles as True Perception
1 I have stated that the basic concepts referred to in this course are not matters of degree. Certain fundamental concepts cannot be understood in terms of opposites. It is impossible to conceive of light and darkness or everything and nothing as joint possibilities. They are all true or all false. It is essential that you realize your thinking will be erratic until a firm commitment to one or the other is made. A firm commitment to darkness or nothingness, however, is impossible. No one has ever lived who has not experienced some light and some thing. No one, therefore, is able to deny truth totally, even if he thinks he can.

It was when I really understood that my commitment had to be total that the most recent shifts in my understanding occurred. Even though Jesus tells us this early in the Course, I just could not seem to grasp the idea for a long time. I am so used to the idea of “choices” that I could not understand a lack of degree, or the idea of no opposites.

Maybe the first time I began to accept that there could be no opposite or degree was when I read Lesson 152, The power of decision is my own. It says in part:

1 No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is.

2 You may believe that this position is extreme, and too inclusive to be true. Yet can truth have exceptions? If you have the gift of everything, can loss be real? Can pain be part of peace, or grief of joy? Can fear and sickness enter in a mind where love and perfect holiness abide? Truth must be all-inclusive, if it be the truth at all. Accept no opposites and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely.

3 Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true, and nothing else is true.

I was a long way from fully accepting this as true when I read it, but something in me responded to this Lesson.  Some part of me recognized the truth of it and knew how important these words were. Of course, the ego responded by reminding me that if this is true, then I am one guilty woman. It completely ignored that it was saying that I can only be what God created and everything else must be false. All the ego mind heard was that I had made a mess of things and had no one but myself to blame. Even so, I recognized that this lesson was my way Home.

At first, I spent some time insisting there must be exceptions to it. After all, there were so many things that have been part of my life that have nothing to do with me and my actions, and so many things I could not possibly be responsible for. I did finally come around to understanding that this Lesson was absolutely true, but to do that, I had to first accept that it is true always and in every case no matter what it looks like. I had to learn to disregard appearances and know that Jesus would not say this unless it was true.

From this place of rock steady faith, I was led to understandings so that I was finally able to see how it can be that I am responsible for all things in my awareness, and how knowing this can help me let go of the things that are not true. I learned to accept no opposites and no exceptions. When I became confused and could not understand how it is I was responsible, I learned not to say this can’t be true, but instead I would say, “How could this be true?” This represents a simple change in attitude, but the change that made the difference.

I am now firmly committed to certain principles. This certainty makes it easier to allow my mind to be healed. Yes, sometimes my first thought is that someone is guilty, and preferably someone else, but I don’t believe it and that thought is quickly followed by the conviction that I have but done this to myself and that it is meaningless. I gladly accept the Atonement in this situation and open my heart to Love asking that all I have done be undone.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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