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Study of the Text II. The Message of the Crucifixion, Paragraph 8, 10-30-13

I am attending a workshop with Nouk Sanchez. If I have time I may post, but I may not. I will be back on Nov 5.

I. The Message of the Crucifixion, Paragraph 8
8 I am sorry when my brothers do not share my decision to hear only one Voice, because it weakens them as teachers and as learners. Yet I know they cannot really betray themselves or me, and that it is still on them that I must build my church. There is no choice in this, because only you can be the foundation of God’s church. A church is where an altar is, and the presence of the altar is what makes the church holy. A church that does not inspire love has a hidden altar that is not serving the purpose for which God intended it. I must found His church on you, because those who accept me as a model are literally my disciples. Disciples are followers, and if the model they follow has chosen to save them pain in all respects, they are unwise not to follow him.

I am glad to know that even when I fail to share Jesus’ decision to hear only one Voice that I am not betraying him or myself. I weaken my ability to teach and to learn, but it’s ok, nothing important has changed. I am still the foundation upon which Jesus builds his church. The reason this hit home for me this morning is that I have been very conflicted lately when it comes to what is most important to me.

In the Manual for Teachers, Jesus said that it (the resurrection) is the relinquishment of all other purposes, all other interests, all other wishes and all other concerns. It is the single desire of the Son for the Father.  Sometimes, usually actually, I feel this and I know it is true for me and when it is not, I want it to be true for me, so I have willingness for it to be true.

Recently, however, I have been going through a process of allowing my mind to be healed that feels like it is very protracted. I want to let go of the belief that food is the cause of weight gain. Man! This is a hard one. I believe it as a concept, and it makes perfect sense when I think about it. Jesus says that the body is neutral, that it is an effect and effects can’t have effects. He says the body cannot even feel. He says that everything including the body is in my mind and that everything is there by my choice.

I see that the size and shape of my body are choices I make. If certain foods seem to affect my body it can only be because that is my choice. I choose to have a weight problem and I create the illusion of it happening every time I eat certain things. Why would I do that? It must be part of the unconscious guilt we all carry around.

It takes form in different ways and this is one of them. Probably other reasons too, but the most important thing for me to notice is that I but do this to myself and the source of the problem are my thoughts, the way it occurs is just the way I get the effect I want while convincing myself it is not my fault and I am just a victim.

That is clear enough for me to work with the concept, but moving it from the head to the heart is turning out to be more difficult than I would have imagined. Which brings me to today’s idea. I realized that my prayer for healing is taking me more deeply into the issue. Do I want to have a certain size and shape to my body? Is this my purpose, my interests, my concerns, my goal? Or is my purpose to let go of all other goals, and to give myself to the complete healing of my mind so that I can return my self to God?

I want to wake up! I want to remember God, and to remember my Self. I want to be a teacher for God all the time, not just in specific moments of the day. I want to help my brothers to wake up. These are things I really want. Until the next time I pass in front of a mirror and think, “I’ve really got to lose some weight.” Then I am right back to a different goal. 

This morning I realized something. I thought I was asking that my mind be healed about weight loss. What I really want is that my mind be healed of the belief that weight loss is my salvation. I really want to relinquish of all other purposes, all other interests, all other wishes and all other concerns, and remember that I have a single desire. I want to be with my Father with my whole mind. No more dreaming of separation, just total union with All That Is. That is my real goal.

In the meantime, I am still innocent even though I forget my goal and go running after lesser desires as if they will save me. This manic attempt to make something out of nothing is painful, and Jesus has offered me a way out of this pain. I would be crazy not to take it. I am still innocent and as I remember my innocence, I am happy to see these little forays into nothingness so that I can ask again that my mind be healed. No guilt, no fear, just a return to mindfulness and a return to the truth and a return to being a disciple of Jesus.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text II. The Message of the Crucifixion, Paragraph 7, 10-29-13

I. The Message of the Crucifixion, Paragraph 7
7 Your resurrection is your reawakening. I am the model for rebirth, but rebirth itself is merely the dawning on your mind of what is already in it. God placed it there Himself, and so it is true forever. I believed in it, and therefore accepted it as true for me. Help me to teach it to our brothers in the name of the Kingdom of God, but first believe that it is true for you, or you will teach amiss. My brothers slept during the so-called “agony in the garden,” but I could not be angry with them because I knew I could not be abandoned.

I almost overlooked the message in that first sentence. Jesus says that my resurrection is my reawakening. Jesus was resurrected from what seemed like death to show that there is no death and the Son of God cannot die. I will experience my own resurrection as I wake up from the dream. But wait! He says my resurrection is my reawakening. In another place in the Course Jesus says that when he ascended we were with him, and now it seems that when he resurrected, we were with him. We share the same mind.

It seems, though, that we must also experience the resurrection from our own point of view as well, and Jesus experiences it with us, just as we experienced his with him. Jesus has awakened from the dream but it is not complete until he awakens through all of us. This seems odd to us who are still dreaming we are separate, but again, we share the same mind.

Awakening should be easy since we are reborn as we remember what is already in our minds, but to do so, we must accept what is there. We must believe it. Jesus wants our help. He wants us to teach what is true, but we must believe it ourselves in order to teach it. We are innocent, every one of us and in every case, we are innocent. We are invulnerable and so cannot be hurt. We cannot be betrayed or abandoned. We are as God created us. This is true regardless of the stories we tell ourselves.

It seems so easy when Jesus puts it like this. We are, simply, as God created us. All we have to do is turn away from everything we think we know and everything we think we see, feel, experience in any way. We only have to stop believing our eyes and ears and mind. We have to give up all our favorite victim stories. Easy peasy, right?

As it turns out, it’s not so easy to do. Even those who were following Jesus found it impossible to believe that no one was guilty. They felt guilty for falling asleep in the Garden. They felt guilty for abandoning and betraying Jesus, even as he was teaching them that he cannot be betrayed or abandoned. But this is the lesson. This is the way we wake up. We simply accept as true that we are as God created us.

Really, how hard can this be?  Surely, it is harder to maintain the illusion that we can be different than we are created. I am not making a literal story of being crucified, but I do crucify myself in little ways all the time to prove that I am separate and a victim and not at all like the Divine being God created in His Own image.

Sunday my car started acting up and I will have to take it to be fixed. The dealership can’t even look at it until Thursday. Then my ceiling fan broke and now I will have to find someone to replace it. There are other little things around the house that are going to have to be fixed as well. I can’t do these things myself and the ego thinks these are all disasters.

It also thinks I am a victim and these problems prove it. The ego says I will never see myself any other way and I am guilty for that. But the Holy Spirit speaks, too. He says that these are no big deal, that they are simply effects of the vestiges of the belief in victimization. “Let the belief in guilt and victimhood be healed,” He says. “Just another opportunity to heal the mind for the Sonship, that’s all.”

He tells me that these effects are meaningless, but He will use them to heal my mind and then I can teach perfection for Him. I feel kind of sheepish as I get down from the cross. I still forget the truth and need a gentle reminder from time to time. The Holy Spirit doesn’t mind. That is His function.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text II. The Message of the Crucifixion, Paragraph 6, 10-28-13

1. The Message of the Crucifixion, Paragraph 6
6 As I have said before, “As you teach so shall you learn.” If you react as if you are persecuted, you are teaching persecution. This is not a lesson a Son of God should want to teach if he is to realize his own salvation. Rather, teach your own perfect immunity, which is the truth in you, and realize that it cannot be assailed. Do not try to protect it yourself, or you are believing that it is assailable. You are not asked to be crucified, which was part of my own teaching contribution. You are merely asked to follow my example in the face of much less extreme temptations to misperceive, and not to accept them as false justifications for anger. There can be no justification for the unjustifiable. Do not believe there is, and do not teach that there is. Remember always that what you believe you will teach. Believe with me, and we will become equal as teachers.

I will always teach what I believe and what I teach will be reinforced as a belief. And I am always teaching. I don’t want to teach that I can be persecuted so I must stop believing in persecution. I do this by being vigilant for thoughts of persecution and looking at that belief with the Holy Spirit. I then ask for healing and accept the healing.

It is very simple and easy to do and I do it all the time, except when I get hooked by some situation that still seems real to me. These are the times when I choose to justify an exception to the rule. When I believe I have been attacked, and then try to protect myself, I teach myself and everyone else that I am vulnerable. It is not God’s Will that I be vulnerable and so it can’t be true, but if I protect myself, that is what I teach myself that is what I will learn and what will be real for me.

Every time I turn around I see an ad recommending that I rush out and get a shot to protect me from shingles. I see it in magazines, at the pharmacy. My customer got shingles and did a good job of scaring me with his tale of woe. Each time I see a reminder to get immunized against shingles I feel afraid and want to do it. Then I feel safe and peaceful about the whole thing, and I remember that my safety lies in my defenselessness. I am conflicted because I am listening first to the ego voice and then to the Voice for God.

I can get the shot of I want to. Getting the shot will not make me guilty. However, getting the shot will teach me that I am vulnerable. Is this what I want to learn and to teach? What I am doing now is watching my thoughts about it, watching as fear speaks to me and as I turn from fear to hear the Holy Spirit. I ask for the Atonement in this situation.

This is my job, my part in the Atonement. I look with the Holy Spirit, I ask for healing, I accept the Atonement. I do this as I am able and I continue to do it when it becomes obvious my willingness is still weak. I trust that as I do my part, the Holy Spirit will do His part. Avoiding shingles through a shot or through mind healing is not the purpose; allowing my mind to be healed as I look at my fears and doubts is the purpose. Being a teacher equal to Jesus is my purpose, so I am giving my willingness to believe as Jesus believes.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text,I. The Message of the Crucifixion, Paragraph 5

I. The Message of the Crucifixion, Paragraph 5
5 I have made it perfectly clear that I am like you and you are like me, but our fundamental equality can be demonstrated only through joint decision. You are free to perceive yourself as persecuted if you choose. When you do choose to react that way, however, you might remember that I was persecuted as the world judges, and did not share this evaluation for myself. And because I did not share it, I did not strengthen it. I therefore offered a different interpretation of attack, and one which I want to share with you. If you will believe it, you will help me teach it.

I am like Jesus and he is like me. Of course, we are alike as spirit. When I am identified with ego we are not alike as he has stopped believing in the ego. No matter that I am not the ego and that I am like Jesus, I will not feel like I am spirit and act like I am spirit until I make the decision that Jesus made. I believe it is possible to do this because Jesus did it, and because he did it, it is done and the only thing for me to do is to choose to remember. Shoot, he even gave me an instruction manual through A Course in Miracles.

Right now in the Course, Jesus is helping us to understand what he wanted us to learn from his crucifixion, and it is very different from what I learned on my own. What I took away from the crucifixion story is that God wants me to suffer on his behalf and I have good reason to fear Him. No matter how blameless my life, in the end I will wind up on the cross. I also learned that no matter how much I suffer at the hands of another I must be forgiving. Martyrdom is the goal.

What I have learned from the Course is a much different interpretation of the crucifixion. Jesus meant it to be such an extreme example that I could not miss the meaning. He must have sighed in frustration at my obtuseness. Or maybe not, maybe he expected to have to come back with further explanations.

His intention was to show that no matter what someone does to the body, nothing has been done. Since nothing has been done, there is no reason to feel persecuted. There was no victim in his story, and if even in the most extreme of circumstances there was no victim, then there must be a better way to perceive the circumstances of my life.

I am finally learning this lesson. I still feel persecuted sometimes, but I always know this is not true, and I ask that my mind be healed. There is never a circumstance, so far, which leaves me thinking that this time I really am a victim, no matter how I feel. When I have that feeling of being victimized, feeling sad about it and afraid, wanting to blame someone, I recognize it for what it is, the ego mind interpreting circumstances according to its beliefs. That in no way makes it true.

When I was married I really thought I was a victim to my husband. I thought his behavior caused me to be unhappy. I knew the Course said that I was never a victim of the world I see, but I made my circumstances special. I just couldn’t see how he wasn’t at fault. All the evidence pointed to his guilt.

However, as I continued my study of the Course, allowing my mind to be healed, my faith in Jesus overcame my desire to be a victim and to have someone to blame. I kept bringing all my proof to the Holy Spirit and asking Him to correct my thinking. It took awhile for me to become willing to accept the Atonement in this case, but eventually I did so. Now I can’t see him as guilty. If he isn’t guilty, I am not a victim.

By letting go of my victim stories one at a time as I was ready, I slowly began to realize that I can’t be victimized. Only a body with a story can be victimized, and I am spirit. I am beyond stories. I can tell stories, and I can believe my stories, but eventually, I must let the stories go and be what I am, the teller of stories not the victim of the stories.

Because I am more aware now, my victim stories are generally more subtle and I recognize them as I notice anxiety in myself. My kids and I have busy lives and don’t always see and talk to each other every day, but we have patterns and when a pattern is broken I notice. My youngest daughter had not called me lately and when I texted her she answered but didn’t seem engaged in the conversation.

I didn’t pay much attention at first, but the ego questioned this behavior and worried at it with thoughts like, she must be mad at me and I wonder what I did to make her not call. The ego brought up all my past transgressions and feelings of unworthiness. I felt sad and defeated. I noticed all these thoughts and all these feelings and I knew they were not true but I also felt them. That’s very strange, but it’s the way it happens now as I waver in my certainty and return to listening to the ego voice instead of only listening to the Voice for God.

This was not the focus of my attention, but it was like a gnat flying around my head that I tried to ignore, telling myself it wasn’t true. Once in a while I would think about her and the doubts and fears would come up, but then I would get back to my business as usual. Ignoring the ego mind as it drums up a case for its beliefs is not a good idea. It doesn’t go away and the story just gets bigger in the mind. I had reached the point that I was sure she was angry about something and it was just so unfair. I had worked up a good case of being unfairly treated, persecuted by my own daughter and condemned to being unloved.

The ridiculousness of the situation finally snapped me out of my foolishness and I stopped ignoring the situation. I sat down with Spirit and told him everything I was thinking. I told him what was happening and my ego interpretation of it. I asked that He heal my mind about this, and that He guide me to the right action.

Yesterday, without the burden of feeling like a victim, I was able to act out of love and not fear. I thought how much I missed going out to eat with my daughter and that we hadn’t done it in a long time. I texted her an invitation which she enthusiastically answered. It was like I was never her victim… because I wasn’t. Once again, I had but done it to myself.

This story might have had an altogether different ending if I had fallen for the ego interpretation of things and not questioned my beliefs. What if I went to her with my fearful beliefs and insisted she own up to her unfair persecution of me. Even if I had gently hinted at her guilt and her need to make amends, I would have been teaching her that we can be persecuted and this is not what I want to teach, because this is not what I want to learn. I am grateful that, while I can still be distracted by the ego, I cannot long be fooled by it. I look forward to the day when I only laugh at the ego.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, II. The Voice for God, Paragraph 7. 10-10-13

I. The Message of the Crucifixion, Paragraph 4
4 Assault can ultimately be made only on the body. There is little doubt that one body can assault another, and can even destroy it. Yet if destruction itself is impossible, anything that is destructible cannot be real. Its destruction, therefore, does not justify anger. To the extent to which you believe that it does, you are accepting false premises and teaching them to others. The message the crucifixion was intended to teach was that it is not necessary to perceive any form of assault in persecution, because you cannot be persecuted. If you respond with anger, you must be equating yourself with the destructible, and are therefore regarding yourself insanely.

I remember a Star Trek story in which Captain Kirk and party visit a planet where people don’t care that they die. If I remember the story line correctly, they volunteer for death at a certain age so as not to over populate the planet. Captain Kirk is incensed that they are not upset about this. The reason they don’t fear death is that they don’t believe in it. They know that at death they simply return to life.

As my mind heals I believe in death less and less. This healing is not complete for me. There is still the seed of doubt, the fear that I am indeed this body, or that this body has some intrinsic value and I wouldn’t want to lose it. If someone held a gun on me and threatened to kill me with it, I doubt I would be calm. But what I understand is that there is no reason not to be calm. Once again, the truth is slowly making its way from my head to my heart.

I don’t get a lot of chances to practice my belief that there is no death, at least not in this one life time. I did have an occasion when I thought I was dying, and before I passed out this is what I felt. I realized something was very wrong. I wondered if I was dying. I felt panic. I decided to continue to trust Holy Spirit that He knew what was best for my next step toward awakening. I passed out. This all happened in seconds. So maybe I would be, finally, calm if threatened with death.

On the other hand, we practice death all the time. Life is joy and peace. Life is love. If we are experiencing something else, we are not experiencing life. So I guess when I feel pain or sadness, anger or jealousy, I am practicing death. Each time someone says or does something to me that feels like an attack, I practice death if I feel persecuted. If I see it differently, I practice life.

Someone I know “attacked” me. He was someone who I have given the role of caring about me, and he did something that wasn’t caring. My first feeling was of betrayal. I told the Holy Spirit all about it. I told Him what this person did, and I told Him how I felt about it, how sad it made me, how unsafe, and ultimately how angry that he should do this to me. Then I asked Him to help me see it differently and to heal my mind.

The Holy Spirit showed me that nothing happened to me. He showed me that I felt betrayal because of the story I told myself about this person. Even if he meant to betray me, he was only betraying his thoughts about me. My thoughts are betraying me. This is a lesson the Holy Spirit has been teaching me a lot these days and now when He shares this with me, I get it very quickly. Nothing really happened to me, I but did this to myself.

Additionally, I see that there is really no such thing as betrayal. The whole idea of betrayal is something I made up in my mind to explain my fear of God, and to give myself a place to project that fear so I don’t have to confront it. As I allowed my mind to be healed, all the feelings of betrayal and the desire to retaliate dissolved and I felt only compassion and understanding.

What if this person carried their antagonism to another level and started beating my body? Well, I don’t think I am healed of the belief in the illusion to the point that I would not be affected. I am learning that pain is not real, but I have not put it to that kind of test. I am asking that the Holy Spirit heal my mind of the belief in fear, but I have not fully accepted that healing.

I do see that I would not feel pain without the belief in the body and I would not be afraid without the belief that this body and this life are real and matter. No matter how I felt and what I felt, my purpose remains the same; I am to deny the denial of truth. I would use the situation to see where I need to heal my mind and accept the Atonement to the degree I am able. That purpose never changes.

Death is not real. Only the illusion can give us an experience of death, and an experience of something unreal, no matter how real it feels, can never be true. I can only dream of death while I dream that this illusion is life. I am now aware that everything in this illusion that does not reflect the truth is a dress rehearsal for the chapter on my dream of death. Let me remember to use those moments to accept the Atonement for my beliefs.

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Study of the Text, I. The Message of the Crucifixion, Paragraph 3

I. The Message of the Crucifixion
3 You have probably reacted for years as if you were being crucified. This is a marked tendency of the separated, who always refuse to consider what they have done to themselves. Projection means anger, anger fosters assault, and assault promotes fear. The real meaning of the crucifixion lies in the apparent intensity of the assault of some of the Sons of God upon another. This, of course, is impossible, and must be fully understood as impossible. Otherwise, I cannot serve as a model for learning.

I want to focus on the first part of this paragraph. I see that I have been reacting for years as if I were being crucified. Only recently have I begun a consistent practice of reminding myself that I but do this to myself, and what makes this effective is that I don’t make exceptions no matter how tempting. If it is in my world, in my awareness, then I did it to myself, and no one else is responsible.

Here is what happened in the past. I will take something simple like being sick last week. The doctor said it was probably a virus. In the past I would have immediately wondered where I picked up a virus. I would have felt helpless against the world and a victim to this fragile body which can get sick in an instant no matter how careful I was or how good I took care of it.

I could let this make me feel hopeless and depressed, or if I was mentally healthier than that, I would accept that this is just the way things are and work harder at making a healthy body that could at least resist the worst of the diseases. In the back of mind where I didn’t have to look at it all the time, but where it still poisoned me, was the fear that there was nothing I could do but hope for the best and expect the worst. Maybe next time it would be cancer or something like that and there was nothing I could do to prevent it.

It was very easy for me to think of myself as a victim. There really seemed to be nothing I could do about this. I could pray that I would be special to God and spared pain and suffering, but that seemed wrong somehow, to ask God to keep me safe while allowing bad things to be visited on others and this fostered more guilt in the mind.

I would have to deserve special treatment and this is a road that I often went down. It leads to more specialness, more separateness, and I was never good enough in my own mind to be deserving of God’s special love. This is an example of how I felt I was being crucified and that was just a relatively small thing. And I did it to myself.

Taking that same situation as it happened to me last week this is how I did it this time. I saw I was sick and I asked Holy Spirit to help me use this situation to heal my mind. From working with pain and suffering before I have learned that the body is neutral and that it is an effect of the mind and therefore cannot make effects.

This means that the body cannot get sick. It cannot even feel. So the sickness must be in my mind. The pain and suffering must be in my mind. The first thing this does is stop me from looking for someone or something to blame for the symptoms I am experiencing. This body did not catch something from someone else. This mind is simply projecting onto the idea of a body, and you don’t catch beliefs, nor do you treat the body to rid the mind of beliefs.

I know this must be true, but I don’t know it in the way that is instantly healing. It is in my mind, but not yet in my heart, so I continue to use every chance I get to accept the Atonement for my false beliefs about the body. Each time I do this, the knowing moves more completely into the heart and one day I will try to remember exactly what it was like to believe I could be harmed and to believe it was done to me and could be undone through fixing the body. I know it will be like that because that is the way it has happened with other things as I fully accepted the Atonement and allowed my mind to be healed.

Here is something neat that happened while I was sick. I was having very painful stomach cramps and this went on for a couple of hours. Suddenly I realized I was making this sickness special, like it was somehow different than other pain I have felt. This sickness, despite the symptoms which seem very real and centered in the body, could only be in my mind. I chose not to suffer. Instantly the cramps stopped. Instantly.

So I had to wonder, after the fact, why it is that I was willing to see that the really bad pain was not real, but allowed the lesser pain of mild nausea, headache, and tiredness to continue. I wonder what value sickness has for me. I had a lot of ego thoughts during this week long sickness. The ego voice in my head wondered if it was something serious and I listened to that voice and took the body to the doctor.

While there I realized that this was going to be a waste of time. He asked me questions about how long I had stomach cramps and how serious the pain was. What do I say to him? “Well, Doc, I had pain until I remembered pain is not real. Does that help you diagnose me?” I lost interest in the doctor as I realized that going to the doctor was just a response to listening to the ego instead of Holy Spirit.

That’s ok though, and I’m not guilty for that. In fact the doctor gave me something for the symptoms that I was not willing to let go any other way. I may be confused about what is real and what isn’t, but I am no longer willing to suffer like I used to. I am also no longer willing to accept the ego’s judgment of me. I am innocent when I learn my lesson about the body, and I am just as innocent when I choose to pretend that medicine is what I need.

The difference in what happens now when I get sick is that no matter what I do about it, I am not confused about my purpose. I don’t waste as much time trying to find someone or something to blame. I don’t ever fully believe the ego thoughts about it. I still waver about medicine and doctors or accepting the Atonement, but really, I know that it is in my mind, not my body and that the mind is my responsibility.

I know I have not been crucified, but I still crucify myself. I just get down off the cross much sooner now. And I don’t waste these crucifixions. I look at them with the Holy Spirit and allow Him to show me a different way. Actually, this is pretty exciting. While I accepted the false belief that I was sick, I didn’t suffer much because I didn’t completely believe in the sickness. I would waver from suffering to just watching, but mostly I didn’t suffer. I noticed how unstable I am when I have one foot in the truth and one foot in the ego.

I am willing to learn these things without the discomfort of sickness. “Holy Spirit, I see that I still value the idea of sickness and I am willing for the Atonement for that false belief. I am willing to learn without pain. I am willing to know my worth and my innocence. Please heal my mind.”

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text I. The Message of the Crucifixion, Paragraphs 1,2

I. The Message of the Crucifixion, Paragraphs 1,2
1 For learning purposes, let us consider the crucifixion again. I did not dwell on it before because of the fearful connotations you may associate with it. The only emphasis laid upon it so far has been that it was not a form of punishment. Nothing, however, can be explained in negative terms only. There is a positive interpretation of the crucifixion that is wholly devoid of fear, and therefore wholly benign in what it teaches, if it is properly understood.
2 The crucifixion is nothing more than an extreme example. Its value, like the value of any teaching device, lies solely in the kind of learning it facilitates. It can be, and has been, misunderstood. This is only because the fearful are apt to perceive fearfully. I have already told you that you can always call on me to share my decision, and thus make it stronger. I have also told you that the crucifixion was the last useless journey the Sonship need take, and that it represents release from fear to anyone who understands it. While I emphasized only the resurrection before, the purpose of the crucifixion and how it actually led to the resurrection was not clarified then. Nevertheless, it has a definite contribution to make to your own life, and if you will consider it without fear, it will help you understand your own role as a teacher.

I must confess that the crucifixion caused extreme fear in me for a very long time, even after I began studying the Course. I was greatly relieved when Jesus said that his crucifixion was the last useless journey the Sonship need make. I might hurt myself but at least it isn’t a mandate from on high. I have a choice and I am not guilty for choosing pain, and I am not guilty if I don’t choose pain.

Second confession: The crucifixion is not wholly devoid of fear for me. There is still a seed of fear in me, and I understand that this is because I still believe in fear and so everything I perceive has passed through that filter in my mind. This is true of everything, not just crucifixion. When something lovely happens, it still passes through that filter and picks up a bit of fear.

The best things that ever happened to me in this life story were the births of my children. I remember each one and the feeling of joy as I first held them, but with the joy came fear. I gave that fear stories of loss and danger, but those were just stories, explanations the mind could use to explain the fear. Nothing was actually happening to cause the fear; it was just there, painting the landscape of my illusion because it was in my mind.

At one time my fear filter was predominant in my mind and I saw everything through a heavy haze of fear. I trusted nothing, and expected the worse even as I prayed for something better. My prayer for something better did not go unanswered, though the answer was different and far better than I could have imagined. My mind began a slow but steady healing process.

I imagine it like this. I have a lovely thought or experience and it is like a brilliant and beautiful light. This light passes through my mind and its dark filter of fear and comes out much dimmed. As my mind heals, the filter gets cleaner and the light passes through with less obstruction so that when it gets to my conscious mind it is still bright.

Now I ask for healing every time I feel the fear in my mind and so fear does not have as many opportunities to take me hostage like it used to. Something happens and I notice fear and instead of just believing the fear, I ask that my mind be healed of the untrue thoughts. The part of my mind that knows no fear is stronger in my awareness now.

I do have some hooks, things that fear can hang its hat on, but there are fewer and fewer of those as I continue to ask the Holy Spirit to purify my mind. What I know is that fear is not a natural state for the Sons of God. It occurred when guilt entered the mind at the thought of our perceived betrayal of the Creator, and since nothing of the sort actually happened, the fear has no basis and is no more real than the illusion of separation. But until I have laid the guilt aside completely, fear will still haunt me and I will not know my Self.

This is why I try never to simply accept fear, but to always look at it with the Holy Spirit. I don’t ask Him to take the fear away which implies that it is real and dangerous and out of my control. I ask Him to heal my mind of the belief that the Son of God could ever be afraid. I ask Him to heal my mind of the core belief in fear, which is that my Father is angry and vengeful and so I am in constant danger.

The Holy Spirit has helped me to see that I am not afraid of things in my life, but that the circumstances of my life are the effects of my core fear. I think I am afraid of heights, but I am afraid that God hates me. I think I am afraid my children will suffer, but I am afraid that God wants our suffering. I think I am afraid of not having enough money to retire on, but I am afraid that I deserve to suffer because I betrayed God.

It is a relief to understand that I don’t have hundreds of little fears to get through and find healing for, but really I have one fear, which takes many forms. I need only be healed of the one fear, the fear of my Father. This morning I read this on Facebook. It was posted by Brian Longhurst, who receives lovely messages. It said, in part:

You have followed from afar off in faithful commitment. Now shall I draw you unto Me, into the secret place, the Holy of Holies. There shall you receive the mantle of purification (because of your heart’s desire and your faithfulness).

I just cried and cried when I read this. I cried because I recognized that I don’t believe in my worthiness, and I cried because I know this is true and I am so relieved to know it is true. God does love me, still, and holds me dear. The split mind at work again. The good news is that the part of the mind that knows the truth is much more in my awareness now and while I am still aware of the ego mind, I have no doubt that I will change my mind about that and change it fully.

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