Together, We Light the Way

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Study of the Text 7-22-13

III. Love Without Conflict, Paragraph, 5
7-22-13

5 There is a kind of experience so different from anything the ego can offer that you will never want to cover or hide it again. It is necessary to repeat that your belief in darkness and hiding is why the light cannot enter. The Bible gives many references to the immeasurable gifts which are for you, but for which you must ask. This is not a condition as the ego sets conditions. It is the glorious condition of what you are.

I still believe in the dark. I still believe in the ego belief system of separation. But I questioned that darkness and my little willingness to see through it has cracked it open and light is coming in. Once light shown through the shadowy darkness, I saw how insubstantial the darkness really is, and I long for more light. So what keeps me from throwing the doors wide open and allowing light to flood my mind?

Truly, I don’t know. I creep around in the darkness with what little light I will allow myself, peeking cautiously into dark corners, asking for the gift of clarity for this one little area, and then another. Never once have I regretted uncovering the deception that lies in the darkness, and never once has my discovery caused me pain or suffering. But the ego still insists that I am being asked to sacrifice my own will for the will of a vengeful and jealous God, and insanely I stand here cautious and uncertain, wondering if this time it could be true.

My progress has been slow, but it has been steady and certain and there is no chance I will creep back under the covers and hide my head. I want to wake up! It feels like it is time and I am ready, so I swallow my disappointment in my reluctance to just throw wide the doors and welcome the Christ with open arms. I continue the slow methodical search for dark thoughts and I try to keep nothing from Jesus.

Usually this is a pretty straightforward job. I notice that a judgmental thought about someone and I realize that thought, that bit of darkness, must be brought to the light. My happiness depends on it. Behind that dark thought are the gifts of God, but I cannot get to them while I cling to my judgment. Light will not penetrate my desire to hide from it. I’ve done this often enough to look forward to the moment of enlightenment as I allow the thought to be undone in my mind.

What I realize now is that bringing the judgmental thoughts to the light are helping me to wake up, but that as I continue to do this I am just poking around in the dark, choosing the judgments I am ready to expose to the light. This is why it feels like an endless process. I am being invited to skip to the end, to just pull aside the veil and welcome in the glorious light. Would I like to give up the very idea of judgment? With that gift, all the judgmental thoughts will all go at once, replaced with peace and joy, and love.

The thought makes my heart sing and I think, surely, I am ready now! How many of these useless thoughts am I going to uncover before I am ready to laugh away the whole idea of judgment. What has it ever gotten me? Why do I protect it as if judging were my last hope of salvation? It is not! The thought that I might expose the very idea of judgment to the Light swells me with anticipation, but then I notice that little reluctance hiding in my desire for light. It is not even a thought, just a feeling of pulling back. What? Am I crazy? Apparently so. Some insane part of me thinks there may yet be use for judgment.

I swear I don’t know why I fight for the right to judge. But of course, I do know. I just don’t want to look that closely. I would give the thought to the Holy Spirit, but I would be clutching it so tightly, He could not take it from me. It is like we were fighting over it, a spiritual tug of war, but actually I was only fighting with myself. I give it up. No, I can’t. Yes, I give it up. Then I pull it close, clutching it feverishly to my self. Stop it, Myron! Just stop it. Conflict is exhausting. I took a two hour nap yesterday just to recover enough strength to go to sleep. I am absolutely ridiculous.

It would make me sad if it were not so funny. I will not indulge the ego with fear of failure. I already fell for its story of struggle and now that I see it so clearly, I laugh at myself and I surrender. “Holy Spirit, I surrender my dark thought to you. I don’t know what to do with it. I cannot make myself think differently, but I want a clear mind. I offer you the darkness alongside my sincere desire and trust you know what to do with it. I want to let go of the belief I have any use for judgment. Please strengthen my resolve. Thank You, God. I love You, God.”

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Study of the Text 7-19-13

III. Love Without Conflict, Paragraph 4
7-19-13
4 You who identify with your ego cannot believe God loves you. You do not love what you made, and what you made does not love you. Being made out of the denial of the Father, the ego has no allegiance to its maker. You cannot conceive of the real relationship that exists between God and His creations because of your hatred for the self you made. You project onto the ego the decision to separate, and this conflicts with the love you feel for the ego because you made it. No love in this world is without this ambivalence, and since no ego has experienced love without ambivalence the concept is beyond its understanding. Love will enter immediately into any mind that truly wants it, but it must want it truly. This means that it wants it without ambivalence, and this kind of wanting is wholly without the ego’s “drive to get.”

I really get that all love in the ego world is ambivalent. There are conditions on even the strongest love I am capable of experiencing. For me that would be the love for my children. I love them so very much, and yet I feel that love in degrees. When they please me I feel the love more strongly than when they displease me. I hate saying that, but it is the truth. The love I feel for them is all mixed up with ego neediness and ego judgment. When I am able to detach from the mother role and think of us all as aspects of the same Self, I feel something that is much closer to actual love and that love does not waver.

Jesus says that real love is without ambivalence because it is wholly without the ego’s “drive to get.” Here is an example of how I see the “drive to get” showing up in my relationships with my children. For Mother’s Day, my youngest son sent me a really lovely card. He talked about what a good mother and good person I am. He congratulated me on my fulfilling spiritual life and talked about how it brings comfort and inspiration to others. It was especially touching to me because he recognized what matters to me and was willing to acknowledge it even though it is not important to him.

One of my daughters was there and I showed it to her. She was touched too, and then she said, “No wonder he’s your favorite.” I laughed at that and reassured her that I don’t have a favorite child. This is true because I love them all equally, but in that moment, she was right. In that moment, this child of mine had provided me with the ego need to be acknowledged and elevated. In that moment that made him very special to me, and so in the ego thinking, I loved him with special love.

Later I was thinking about loving all my children equally (maybe reassuring myself?) and was thinking about what I love about each one, and how precious each one is to me. Then I realized that this too is conditional love. It is not pure love without reason. I love this thing and that thing, each one being special in their own way. Real love, outside of ego, is pure and has no conditions and no degrees. Because this is not something we experience very much we don’t expect it from God. We tend to think that God loves us for a reason, and that what we do can influence that love.

Jesus says the reason for this ambivalence is that we hate ourselves, the self that we made, the ego self with which we Identify. I understand that, too. I have felt that hate many times. I hate that I am not thin. I hate that I am not very good at so many things. I hate that I have played the victim so many times in my life. I hate myself for being bad with money. I hate myself for never having been the kind of pretty I always admired in others. I hate myself every time I fail to live up to my spiritual expectations.

I don’t usually express it like this. I generally disguise the feeling and call it frustration or disappointment. I say, “I wish I could have”, or “too bad I didn’t”, but I really hate myself for my perceived inadequacies. Once in a while the barriers that generally prevent me from confronting my self-hatred break down and I rage at myself. Well, I used to do that. It hasn’t happened in a long time. And often when it did, it took the form of depression and despair, but these are just hatred and rage turned inward.

I think it is a good sign that I can freely write about and share these insights. I have been allowing my mind to be healed of the belief in guilt and I am learning that I am not actually this ego self, but am really spirit. This is the reason I can confront the self I made and allow myself to see the ugliness of it. It is not me. And yet, I still want to delete all this and continue to hide behind my well-constructed spiritual ego.

I do not love the ego I made and that is why I do not, while so closely identified with it, know what love is. It is why I am afraid of God. If I don’t love what I made, maybe he does not love what He made either. If I am so disappointed in myself, maybe He is disappointed also. What if a child of mine turned against me completely? Would my “love” turn to hate? Would God’s love turn to hate if I betrayed him completely?

If I don’t know how to completely and unconditionally love my children, it stands to reason that I would believe that God’s love for His children could be conditional as well, in which case I’m screwed because I obviously don’t deserve His love. Except maybe if you compare me to a serial killer or something, and so here comes projection and blame and specialness. This ego version of love and its counterpart, hate, explain a lot about human behavior and the fear of God we all have.

I am learning to let go of guilt and fear and I am learning that what I always thought of as love is not even close to real love. I love that Jesus talks about this in such a direct way, and that he lets me know I am not the only one who feels like this, and that it is simply the ego experience.  As my mind heals I am beginning to experience the love of God in little doses, as I am able. I am seeing very clearly what is not love and that is a good start, because seeing it is not love, I can let it go, and be open to another experience.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 7-18-13

III Love Without Conflict, Paragraph 3
7-18-13
3 It is surely apparent by now why the ego regards spirit as its “enemy.” The ego arose from the separation, and its continued existence depends on your continuing belief in the separation. The ego must offer you some sort of reward for maintaining this belief. All it can offer is a sense of temporary existence, which begins with its own beginning and ends with its own ending. It tells you this life is your existence because it is its own. Against this sense of temporary existence spirit offers you the knowledge of permanence and unshakeable being. No one who has experienced the revelation of this can ever fully believe in the ego again. How can its meager offering to you prevail against the glorious gift of God?

I am spirit. I know this is true because I am told this by Jesus in A Course in Miracles and I trust the source. I have had experiences that help me to believe this is true. But I don’t live that knowledge of permanence and unshakeable being that Jesus talks about. The experience I have had of it does keep me from fully believing in my other identity, the ego. So I live this shadow existence where I switch identities, sometimes knowing myself as spirit and sometimes mistaking myself for this body I call Myron.

My spirit identity is such a happy place to be. It is peaceful and loving and while I am there I cannot imagine being anywhere else. But then I become afraid of losing Myron and so I allow my mind to stray to guilt or fear and I am catapulted right back into that body/personality that is the ego. And what is the ego’s enticement? How does it lure me back? What could be more tantalizing than happiness, peace and love?

I’m thinking. ~smile~

Jesus says that the ego offers me temporary existence. That hardly seems enough. Well, I think it uses guilt and fear to convince me that this existence is the only thing that stands between me and annihilation. It offers me a place to hide from my Creator. It tells me that I made a really bad mistake and now I am in trouble, but not to worry, it has a place for me to hide. God would never recognize me in this disguise as a body living a temporary life in a world wrought with danger.

Well, the ego’s got that right! I don’t even recognize me. I really believe I am this frail and vulnerable creature, and I find the idea that I am holy, that I lack nothing, that I could never be sick, suffer or die, that I am part of God . . . well, just ludicrous.  And yet, there is a little spark, a light that I cannot explain away. It burns in my mind and will not be extinguished. As I undo the ego beliefs, a little at a time, that light flares to life and I do dare to believe in the identity Jesus says is mine.

As I remember the truth I don’t turn from the ego identity, it just isn’t there anymore. I feel so happy to just be! I am so full of gratitude that it bursts from my heart and my lips in words and kindnesses and a joy I don’t know how to explain or what to do with. I want to share it and I long for everyone to have it. I write. I listen with compassion. I hug. I forgive unconditionally. I do what I can to give what I have. I must give it because that is the nature of love; it must flow.

And then just when I think I will burst from my ego existence forever, I scare myself back into the body story again. I’m small and safe from all this glory. I’m just little me and no one expects much so I can’t fail, at least no more than usual. I’m not good but I’m a lot better than others so I won’t be noticed. Jeez, it’s stifling in here.

How did I get back here? I was thinking about what I said to my sister in law and worrying that it was the wrong thing. I don’t think I was listening to guidance. I am so damned guilty! Guilty of not listening. Guilty for hurting her feelings. Guilty, guilty, guilty! No wonder I am hiding out in ego land. No wonder I am afraid to face God. I think it always happens like this. I think guilt is at the core of all things ego.

Here is the thing. I know the magic words to open the prison doors. Nope, its not abracadabra. It’s, “Reveal to me my innocence.” I know. It doesn’t seem like it could be so easy. But that’s it. That prayer, coupled with complete sincerity and willingness, dissolves ego doubts and uncertainties like sugar in water. Here I am, God, shower me with my innocence. Rain it down on me! I will soak it up and it will permeate my mind and bring me back to my senses. I am innocent. You are innocent. There is only innocence. All else is an ego illusion. “Reveal to me my innocence, God!”

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 7-13-13

7-17-13
III. Love Without Conflict, Paragraph 2

2 This is written in the form of a prayer because it is useful in moments of temptation. It is a declaration of independence. You will find it very helpful if you understand it fully. The reason you need my help is because you have denied your own Guide and therefore need guidance. My role is to separate the true from the false, so truth can break through the barriers the ego has set up and can shine into your mind. Against our united strength the ego cannot prevail.

I depend on that promise of help. I know just enough to know I don’t know anything. If in any situation I accept I don’t know, I can step back and allow Jesus to help me. He will sort through my thoughts, showing me what is true and what is just ego nonsense. Earlier he said he would substitute for my ego if I would let him and I readily agreed to that arrangement.

I notice during the day when I have let the ego take over and I remember that I have entrusted this to Jesus. It is a great help and has made for a much more peaceful day. Jesus says he teaches through contrast, and I see that those moments when I depend on ego thinking to make decisions seem so much more painful than they did before. The contrast is striking, and motivates me to be vigilant for my tendency to return to ego as my guide.

The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen.

When Jesus offered to substitute for the ego in my mind I knew this would be very helpful, but didn’t realize that it was more than just help with sorting through my thoughts. When Jesus and I join in this manner the Kingdom is perfectly united. For awhile now I have recognized how important joining is. Every lesson, every healing is magnified when I join with another.

This is what Jesus has been trying to tell me all through the Course. We have the idea of separation in our mind, and to undo it we need to join. We join every time we set aside the ego thought of separate interests. For instance, I might think I need my boss to recognize my value to the company. I want him to see me and what I do for him and realize I am more valuable to him than the other employees are.

Then I realize that what I really want is to be happy, peaceful, safe and loved. This is what he wants, too. This is what the other employees want. Before that realization, we each had separate interests and I had to be sure mine was met, which meant that theirs was not. After I realized that what I really wanted was the same thing that we all wanted, I no longer saw us as separate and in competition. I saw us as all joined in this same interest.

This is just one example of life as I learn to join rather than to separate. It seems like we join in this moment and then in another moment, for one specific thing or another specific thing. But it is more important than any specific problem, or any specific healing. These moments of joining are undoing the idea of separation. They are reminding us of our unity, awakening us from the dream of separation.

Joining with Jesus in this way, asking him to sort the through the thoughts in my mind and show me the ones that are true, is more than just helpful. It is uniting to protect the Kingdom, and the power of that uniting perfectly protects the Kingdom, and guarantees the ego will not prevail against it.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 7-16-13

7-16-13
Chapter 4: THE ILLUSIONS OF THE EGO
III. Love Without Conflict, Paragraph 1
1 It is hard to understand what “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you” really means. This is because it is not understandable to the ego, which interprets it as if something outside is inside, and this does not mean anything. The word “within” is unnecessary. The Kingdom of Heaven is you. What else but you did the Creator create, and what else but you is His Kingdom? This is the whole message of the Atonement; a message which in its totality transcends the sum of its parts. You, too, have a Kingdom that your spirit created. It has not ceased to create because of the ego’s illusions. Your creations are no more fatherless than you are. Your ego and your spirit will never be co-creators, but your spirit and your Creator will always be. Be confident that your creations are as safe as you are.
The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen.

The Kingdom of Heaven is me. I don’t remember the experience of this, but I accept that it must be true. Just as in the section The Obstacles to Peace, Jesus says of peace: You are the center from which it radiates outward, to call the others in. I am the center of peace? I don’t feel like I am peace, but rather I have to seek peace, and yet Jesus says otherwise. He says that I am peace and I don’t know it because I have placed obstacles to it and now must remove them.

Here he has said that the Kingdom of Heaven is me. I am peace. I am the Kingdom of Heaven. This is the reason I cannot fail! I don’t seek to be someplace else or to become something different. I seek to remove obstacles I placed in my mind to, obstacles to what I already am. How hard could this be? It does feel hard, but only because at times I remain conflicted about what I want.

First Jesus tells me that I am God’s Kingdom and then he tells me that I have a Kingdom that I (my spirit, not my ego self) created. I have fathered creations! I don’t even know what to think about this. I know that I am part of God, created like Him and therefore must also be a creator, but thinking about this in such specifics just leaves me stunned.

I cannot imagine what that must look like which makes me want to cry, because if I can forget my own creations it just underscores just how deeply lost in my dream I am. Jesus must have anticipated this reaction because he goes on to assure me that my creations are no more fatherless than I am, and that I can be confident that my creations are as safe as I am. I am not fatherless and I am safe, and this extends to my creations.

Also in The Obstacles to Peace Jesus calls our present dream like state, the great amnesia in which the memory of God seems quite forgotten. We have self-inflicted amnesia, and an agreement to pretend that we don’t remember who we are, and that we don’t remember our existence in God. It is forgotten, not lost, and we are beginning to waken from that dream.

Now here is a difference between the dreaming we seem to do at night, and the dream of being separate from God. At night when I sleep and I dream, my waking story is on hold. I am in the bed and I am doing nothing else in my life while I lay there. But with the ego’s dream of life, it is different. I dream of all sorts of meaningless things (just as happens to Myron in her night dreams) but in the meantime, my spirit goes on as if nothing is happening (which is appropriate I suppose, since nothing is happening). My real life continues uninterrupted into eternity, and I, as spirit, continue to create even while I dream the ego dream of life.

Yesterday I had two experiences of being outside my self, and I take hope from those experiences that I am closer now to accepting the Atonement. I say this to you because they were so very brief and it would be easy for the ego to discount them as the memory fades, but I want to remember, and I keep only what I share. The ego will not prevail against the Kingdom. Thank you, God, for that. And thank you, sweet brother, for bringing into the dream this reassurance from Heaven.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 7-15-13

II The Ego and False Autonomy, paragraph 11
7-15-13
11 It cannot be emphasized too often that correcting perception is merely a temporary expedient. It is necessary only because misperception is a block to knowledge, while accurate perception is a stepping-stone towards it. The whole value of right perception lies in the inevitable realization that all perception is unnecessary. This removes the block entirely. You may ask how this is possible as long as you appear to be living in this world. That is a reasonable question. You must be careful, however, that you really understand it. Who is the “you” who are living in this world? Spirit is immortal, and immortality is a constant state. It is as true now as it ever was or ever will be, because it implies no change at all. It is not a continuum, nor is it understood by being compared to an opposite. Knowledge never involves comparisons. That is its main difference from everything else the mind can grasp.

For the most part, my mind is focused solely on correcting my misperceptions. I know that my aim is to undo the ego, or to put it another way, to remove the blocks to Love’s presence. I seldom think past that because it is for me, still an all-consuming job. Well, perhaps not so all-consuming as it used to be, but still, there is much to be done. But Jesus doesn’t want us to lose sight of the end game. Yes, we are to allow our perceptions to be corrected, but ultimately, all perception becomes unnecessary.

As I ask the Holy Spirit to heal my mind (correct my perceptions) I am building a bridge. My right perceptions will bring me to a point that I am ready for all perception to be released. In my mind, I have seen this as me being taught the truth, then when I have enough clarity to want more, being led to something else. But as I read this paragraph I see that I do not really grasp the truth of this. I am still looking at it from the standpoint of Myron when I think like this. In other words, I am asking as if I am the character I made up for this story.

This is why I know I still have more work to do, more undoing of the ego. I sometimes feel my true nature, but often I slip right back into character, and though never as completely as before, I still am easily confused. When the mind is completely healed of all misperception, I will know me and there will be no confusion about who I am. I won’t be a better Myron. I won’t be Myron with clarity. I will know myself as Spirit, and I will know all there is to know and perception will become inconceivable.

I have to stop once in a while and remind myself what perception really is.  The dictionary defines it as a neurological process of observation and interpretation. Interpretation implies that it could be more than one meaning depending on how I see it. Once ego is undone, there will be no more interpretation. All will be known and the known will never change. I am so accustomed to variation and comparison that I hardly know how to describe certainty, but I understand it just enough to want it.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 7-12-13

II THE EGO AND FALSE AUTONAMY, Paragraph 10
7-12-13
10 Salvation is nothing more than “right-mindedness,” which is not the One-mindedness of the Holy Spirit, but which must be achieved before One-mindedness is restored. Right-mindedness leads to the next step automatically, because right perception is uniformly without attack, and therefore wrong-mindedness is obliterated. The ego cannot survive without judgment, and is laid aside accordingly. The mind then has only one direction in which it can move. Its direction is always automatic, because it cannot but be dictated by the thought system to which it adheres.

In this paragraph Jesus de-mystifies salvation and makes it simple for us to understand. Salvation is nothing more than “right-mindedness,” he tells us. This is why our job is to undo the ego or allow the Holy Spirit to correct our thinking, or to use the term Jesus uses, accept the Atonement. Through our desire for God and with the Holy Spirit’s help, all we are doing is letting go of the wrong-minded belief in separation. The mind will then, automatically go in the direction of One-mindedness. Without the ego thought of separation, there will be no other direction to go.

Jesus said something else that is essential to our process of letting go. He said that the ego cannot survive without judgment. You may want to think about that for a moment: The ego cannot survive without judgment. As we let go of judgment the whole ego thought system comes unglued and falls apart on its own. I am learning to watch my mind for judgment thoughts.

Ego judgments can be subtle sometimes, especially now that I look for them but I am training myself to recognize judgment in all its forms. Jesus has told us in an earlier paragraph that he will substitute for our ego if we want him to. So when I notice I am judging I remember that Jesus is now substituting for my ego and he will judge for me, and his judgment is always that I am innocent.

Sometimes I become frustrated with myself because I still choose ego. I will hear myself say something catty about a fellow worker and cringe as it comes out of my mouth. I will feel regretful because I have taught what I don’t want to learn, and I have set my brother back on his path. This is judgment. I have judged myself as sinful, foolish, thoughtless or whatever other word I want to give it. Now I have a choice. I can accept the ego’s judgment, or I can remember that I don’t have to depend on the ego. I have entrusted my ego to Jesus and his judgment is the Holy Spirit’s judgment. I am innocent.

As soon as the thought of innocence enters my mind sanity begins to return. I remember to ask that my innocence be revealed to me. I ask that the other person’s innocence be revealed to me. As this is done I feel love for myself and for everyone involved. I am forgiven my lapse into judgment and I know I am innocent of any wrongdoing. My mind is returned to its natural state of peace and that peace automatically flows outward to envelope my brothers. It is all so simple and so perfect, and so brilliant.

All that is required of me is vigilant mind watching, and a willingness to be healed. At first the vigilance seemed like hard work, but after awhile, even the vigilance was easy and natural. The outcome of this undoing work is so elevating that I am highly motivated to continue it. The mind recognizes peace and joy and naturally turns to it if not deliberately moved to something else through wrong minded thinking.

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