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Study of the Text, II. The Voice for God, Paragraph 7. 10-10-13

II. The Voice for God, Paragraph 7
10-10-13
7 The Voice of the Holy Spirit does not command, because it is incapable of arrogance. It does not demand, because It does not seek control. It does not overcome, because It does not attack. It merely reminds. It is compelling only because of what it reminds you of. It brings to your mind the other way, remaining quiet even in the midst of the turmoil you may make. The Voice for God is always quiet, because It speaks of peace. Peace is stronger than war because it heals. War is division, not increase. No one gains from strife. What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? If you listen to the wrong voice you have lost sight of your soul. You cannot lose it, but you can not know it. It is therefore “lost” to you until you choose right.

This is the Holy Spirit I know; It is gentle, peaceful, loving, kind, quiet, respectful, patient, undemanding, available, utterly trustworthy. I call on the Holy Spirit for help and It answers. I ask for healing and It heals, but It answers the request of my heart and so heals only to the degree I truly desire that healing. It sometimes answers in unexpected ways.

Here is an example. I asked the Holy Spirit to help me let go of the belief in guilt, not just the belief that I am guilty for this thing or that thing, but the belief in guilt altogether. Guilt is not of God so it cannot be real, and while I understand that concept, I still feel guilty for various “sins” that I commit, so I must still believe in it. I feel ready to let that go and so I asked for help.

The Course tells us that the way to do this is to look at my thoughts and beliefs with the Holy Spirit, and deciding against them, ask for the Atonement (healing). So naturally, lots of guilty thoughts are coming forward so that I can see the many uses I have for guilt and make another choice. After awhile I feel overwhelmed with this and even a little confused as I lose my detachment and start to forget why I am looking at guilt. Then I simply feel guilty and this is depressing. I recover, but I am making it a more painful process than it needs to be. Realizing this I asked for help.

A couple of days ago, I was walking from my car to see a customer and I had the thought that even as I walk in this parking lot, I am being healed. It was a little revelation, that. It brought to mind that the important stuff happens without my help. The healing of the mind requires only my sincere desire. The healing itself does not need my help.

Later that day I was worrying about a customer, concerned that I had remembered everything I needed to do for him, and the thought came into my mind that even as I worry, my mind is being healed. I laughed out loud. Yes, my mind is being healed and what I do or say or even think does not prevent that healing. I sincerely asked for healing and so the healing is taking place.

This happened several more times when I was concerned about something or feeling guilty about something. I had a memory of something I said and it triggered the guilt in my mind. I was feeling bad about it and the thought came; even as I sit here in this guilt, my mind is being healed. I was awash in relief to remember that there is nothing to worry about. I am being healed. I am waking up. Nothing I say or do is stopping that.

After awhile I realized that this was a gift from Holy Spirit, the answer to my prayer for help to do the work on guilt without suffering while I did it. I began to notice that often when I paused for that reminder, I felt a sense of removal from the problem, as if I were not part of it, but simply watching it. Such blessings, such grace, and only because I asked for it!

This paragraph also talks about the strength of peace. Before the Course I didn’t understand the idea of peace as strength because my mind was steeped in the idea of attack as defense. I have since learned that in my defenselessness my safety lies. No one gains from strife. I know this because I have proven it to myself in my own life.

I wonder how different our government would be if everyone in it understood this. Perhaps they are helping us all learn that strife is not strength as we watch them squabble and fight for dominance. Everyone has the option of joining them in their divisive behavior by taking sides and giving up their peace to this battle, or stepping back and letting peace guide their thoughts. We will learn the lesson we want to learn, and it won’t be a lesson in politics however it seems. We are all learning and teaching purpose. Am I here to create and promote strife, or peace?

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, II. The Voice for God, Paragraph 6. 10-9-13

II. The Voice for God, Paragraph 6
10-9-13
6 The Holy Spirit calls you both to remember and to forget. You have chosen to be in a state of opposition in which opposites are possible. As a result, there are choices you must make. In the holy state the will is free, so that its creative power is unlimited and choice is meaningless. Freedom to choose is the same power as freedom to create, but its application is different. Choosing depends on a split mind. The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. God did not leave His children comfortless, even though they chose to leave Him. The voice they put in their minds was not the Voice for His Will, for which the Holy Spirit speaks.

Before the split mind choices were meaningless. This is because in our true state the will is free and our creative power is unlimited. But now, because of the split mind, there are opposites and we must make choices. We made a voice that was not real, and we believed that voice, so we were given another Voice. Now there are two voices and we must choose the one we would listen to.

The ego voice that we made and believed will lead us deeper into the illusion and further from Love. The Voice given us by God will help us wake up from the dream of separation and remind us of the truth of who we are. It will lead us to Heaven and restore the memory of True Self. There is no option to not make a choice. This choice must be made every moment of every day.

When I was depressed it was because I chose to believe the ego voice. When I made another choice, I didn’t even realize I was doing so. It is only in retrospect that I see clearly the moment I chose differently. I should say it was the moment I began to choose differently, because it required many choices to let go of the beliefs that made a world where depression is possible. I still make that choice every day.

My life began to change when I began to question my beliefs. Up until that point I just assumed that depression was unavoidable for me. It was my fate. I am sure that beneath that belief there was the belief that I was unworthy and being punished by God for my sins. But after I began to study the Course I learned to doubt the idea of a judgmental, punishing God. I began to doubt my unworthiness. Eventually, I began to doubt the inevitability of depression as a way of life.

I did not set out to rid myself of depression. I didn’t even believe that was possible. But as I questioned my beliefs about God and my nature, I realized that my mind was sick. I learned to ask that my mind be healed, and the miracle occurred. Just as a sick mind projected a sick brain, a healed mind projected a healed brain and the symptoms were gone.

The ego still offers me the option of being depressed. I can see the appeal now. I used to feel sorry for myself and expected others to be sorry for me, too, and that pity was the way I felt loved. When the depression was strong, I could opt out of life and I had that perfect excuse to do so. I was so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed, and no one expected me to. I was so special.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I loved my depression story. A friend had a huge bottle of pills that she kept for the moment the depression was too great to bear. That bottle of pills was her way out if she couldn’t stand life anymore. One day she gave them to me because she didn’t need them anymore. I took them with gratitude and kept them as my failsafe.

You would think that my first reaction would to be to beg her for her secret of getting out of the depression, but instead, I just took the pills and was happy to have them. I believed that death was my only escape and I wasn’t interested in healing as an escape. I loved that story of depression and I wasn’t giving it up. That should have clued me into how sick my mind was, but it would take more suffering for me to reach the point that I began to ask for a different way.

It took time for me to make a different choice, but always, even when I didn’t believe in the possibility of another choice, that other choice was waiting patiently for me. I have friends who chose the bottle of pills, or some other way out, who never made the choice for life. What about them? The cycle of birth and death will just spit them back into the illusion again, and they will have another chance to choose the Voice for God.

Failure is not an option. We are the Son’s of God. We cannot be destroyed, not even by our own hand. We can only dream of destruction. We can dream of suffering as long as we can stand it, but eventually we will dream of God, and then He will lift us up. He waits only for us to make that choice.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text II. The Voice for God, Paragraph 5, 10-8-13

II. The Voice for God, Paragraph 5
10-8-13
5 God does not guide, because He can share only perfect knowledge. Guidance is evaluative, because it implies there is a right way and also a wrong way, one to be chosen and the other to be avoided. By choosing one you give up the other. The choice for the Holy Spirit is the choice for God. God is not in you in a literal sense; you are part of Him. When you chose to leave Him He gave you a Voice to speak for Him, because He could no longer share His knowledge with you without hindrance. Direct communication was broken because you had made another voice.

I made a voice other than God’s and decided to believe everything it said as if it were my god now. That’s kind of scary when I think about it, and I suppose that little twinge of anxiety I feel when I write this is because I am touching on that deep well of unconscious guilt that resides deep in my mind. I think I replaced God and now He can’t even talk to me because I cut Him out of my awareness. It feels scary because I am afraid He is angry about this, but if He were angry He would not have given me a Guide, a Voice to speak for Him.

Direct communication with God has been cut off, not by Him, but by me. I chose to make another voice and I can choose for God instead. This is what I am doing as I practice A Course in Miracles. I am choosing to have the ego undone because the ego is the thing that hinders our communication. I do this by choosing the Holy Spirit over the ego and by doing this consistently until I no longer hear two voices.

There are times when I feel like this is an impossible task. I am encouraged to know that I am in God. How could I be separated from God when I live in Him? And yet, I am no longer in direct communication with my Creator, and I am no longer in peace. The only answer must be that I am not actually separate, but am dreaming of being separate. I am now tired of this dream and am ready to wake up. The Holy Spirit is guiding me out of the dream as I allow Him to undo the ego a belief at a time.

I used to have very low self esteem. Every time I would feel less-than I would ask for healing. I slowly let go of each mistaken thought as I allowed the Holy Spirit to replace that thought with a true one. I cannot hold two diametrically opposed beliefs at the same time. If I believe Holy Spirit then the ego belief is gone. It really is that simple, and yet it took years for me to accept that I cannot be less than someone else. It was not Holy Spirit doing a poor job of guiding me; it was me being balky at letting go of something I thought I needed, but in the end I did it.

Each ego belief that I allow to be undone by the Holy Spirit makes it easier to do the next. He and I are working on a core belief now. I asked Him to help me let go of the belief in guilt, and frankly its kicking my butt. But I know that, together, we will succeed and so it is easier to do than it would have been just a short time ago.  The guilty thoughts arise for me to look at with the Holy Spirit, one after another, and I can get temporarily confused and begin to believe them, forgetting the purpose of looking, at least momentarily.

But now even when that happens, even when I am confused, I am not afraid. This is because I have gone through this process often enough to trust it, and there has been enough mind healing that I am more familiar with the process. This is why the Holy Spirit works with us at a pace we can tolerate. If I had done this before I was ready it would not have worked. I would have run from the guilt thoughts, throwing them at others where I could, and furiously burying them as I have before. If there is one thing I have learned it is that I can trust Holy Spirit. If I am guided to look at something it is because I am ready and I can do it.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text II. The Voice for God, Paragraph 4 10-7-13

II. The Voice for God, Paragraph 4
10-7-13
4 You are the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your mind and so you need a new light. The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let banish the idea of darkness. His is the glory before which dissociation falls away, and the Kingdom of Heaven breaks through into its own. Before the separation you did not need guidance. You knew as you will know again, but as you do not know now.

We are at the end of our journey, you and I. It may not seem so because of all the mistaken thoughts that are coming up for healing, but it is, never the less, true. In fact, our awareness of those thoughts is an integral part of that healing. We would not be doing this study, or certainly not sticking with it unless we were ready to wake up. The closer I get the more aware I become of the guilt and fear thoughts. I know that this is good, but Myron feels anxious about this, and since I am still fairly identified with her, I feel her anxiety.

I also feel eager for the next step and the next. This is good, but the two emotions together, anxiety and eagerness create a sense of conflict in the mind and that is not comfortable. I’m writing about it this morning because Byron Katie says all war belongs on paper and war is what it feels like. I am at war with myself, wanting to wake up, but afraid to leave my dream.

The ending of this story is not in doubt, however I might feel conflicted about it. Light always banishes darkness, and I have invited the Light to shine in my mind. I invite it every time I notice the dark thoughts that still have a place in my mind. Jesus is reminding me that the darkness is not a permanent condition and that I was not always asleep.

Before the separation I did not need a guide but since I dream of separation, I am grateful for the Helper in my mind. I intend to take full advantage of Him, being vigilant for the beliefs that He would shine away at my say-so. I am also comforted to know that my brother, Jesus, stands at the to correct any errors that I cannot correct. Thank you, Brother.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 10-4-13 II. The Voice for God, Paragraph 3

II. The Voice for God, Paragraph 3
10-4-13
3 The principle of Atonement and the separation began at the same time. When the ego was made, God placed in the mind the Call to joy. This Call is so strong that the ego always dissolves at Its sound. That is why you must choose to hear one of two voices within you. One you made yourself, and that one is not of God. But the other is given you by God, Who asks you only to listen to it. The Holy Spirit is in you in a very literal sense. His is the Voice that calls you back to where you were before and will be again. It is possible even in this world to hear only that Voice and no other. It takes effort and great willingness to learn. It is the final lesson that I learned, and God’s Sons are as equal as learners as they are as Sons.

I was reading in the Manual for Teachers this morning: “Heaven is here. There is nowhere else. Heaven is now. There is no other time.” So there is nothing for me to do to be what I am, nowhere to go. It is not in the future or the past. There is only now. But I don’t really know that. I still think I am something else. I still think that Heaven is someplace else. I know the words that refute that, and I believe they must be true, but if I really knew them I would experience life differently than I do.

On the other hand, my life does reflect my growing acceptance of the Atonement, and I have no doubt that I will soon be where I was before and will be again, that is, I will remember who I am. This is happening because I am learning to listen to that one Voice, the Voice for God, and my goal is to hear only that Voice. Right now I still hear the ego voice, but I deny its ability to affect me. Jesus wasn’t kidding when he said that it takes effort and great willingness to learn to hear only this Voice, but it is worth every bit of it.

Because I ask for guilt and fear to be undone in my mind, I get to see a lot of it. This is necessary because for it to be undone I must look at it with the Holy Spirit. With so much of this happening right now I sometimes get discouraged. I see all this fear and guilt and think I haven’t made any progress at all. But while the well of guilt and fear is very deep in us, it is not endless. And I am capable of doing my part. I know this because Jesus said that what he asked us to do, we can do.

Something that helped me to feel more confident came from Chapter 14. It says: “You can learn to bless, and cannot give what you have not. If, then, you offer blessing, it must have come first to yourself. And you must also have accepted it as yours, for how else could you give it away? That is why miracles offer you the testimony that you are blessed.”

The reason this has helped me is that even when I am completely tangled up in my fear and guilt thoughts to such a degree that I have forgotten why I am looking at them, I can still teach the truth without any of that confusion. Because I give that truth I know that I have that truth and that I have accepted it, or I would not be able to give it. This helps me to remember why I am looking at all these thoughts of guilt and fear. I am looking so they can be healed. I am not guilty; I am only looking.

Sometimes it is really uncomfortable to look at the thoughts in my mind, but it is an essential part of the process that allows them to be purified. In doing this work, I am making the effort and giving my willingness to be healed, and thus I am waking up. I am remembering who I am as I accept the Atonement for these thoughts. I am learning to hear only that one Voice.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text II. The Voice for God, Paragraph 2 10-3-13

II. The Voice for God, Paragraph 2
10-3-13
2 The Holy Spirit is the spirit of joy. He is the Call to return with which God blessed the minds of His separated Sons. This is the vocation of the mind. The mind had no calling until the separation, because before that it had only being, and would not have understood the call to right thinking. The Holy Spirit is God’s Answer to the separation; the means by which the Atonement heals until the whole mind returns to creating.

We are not really here. We are dreaming of an impossible existence. It is not our entire mind that is dreaming, just a part of it. We continue to be just as we always have. We are with God. We create. We have creations who love us, just as we love our creator. But we are also, at the same time, dreaming of separation, and the part of the mind that dreams is fully involved in the dream and doesn’t remember that it is just a dream.

I am beginning to remember, just as you are. God placed the answer to the separation in our mind so that when the time came, when we were ready to awaken, we would have the means to do so. This answer is the Holy Spirit, the call to joy. As I get closer to awakening I long for that joy. There was a time when I thought the way out of here was death and in my confusion and depression I considered suicide, but I wasn’t sure that I was right and so I held off.

Now I understand that death is not an answer. It is just another part of the dream. But even my misguided longing to get out of this life made sense, just not the plan for doing it. I am ready to leave the story behind and return all of my mind to God. I am ready to return to true creation. Death is not the exit I thought it was, but there is an exit. As I turn my attention to the Holy Spirit and allow Him to heal my mind, I undo the world I made up. All that will be left is Reality.

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Study of the Text II. The Voice for God 10-2-13

II. The Voice for God
10-2-13
1 Healing is not creating; it is reparation. The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the children of God were before healing was needed, and will be when they have been healed. This alteration of the time sequence should be quite familiar, because it is very similar to the shift in the perception of time that the miracle introduces. The Holy Spirit is the motivation for miracle-mindedness; the decision to heal the separation by letting it go. Your will is still in you because God placed it in your mind, and although you can keep it asleep you cannot obliterate it. God Himself keeps your will alive by transmitting it from His Mind to yours as long as there is time. The miracle itself is a reflection of this union of will between Father and Son.

It is my will to awaken from the dream of separation and to return my full mind to God. This will has been asleep, out of my conscious awareness, for most of my life. This has happened because it is what I wanted to happen. While I can be oblivious to my will, I cannot destroy or lose or even change my will because God keeps it alive for me. I must have changed my mind about remembering my will because it is beginning to surface.

The Holy Spirit is in my mind to help me with this. Because I want to awaken, the Holy Spirit looks with me at the ego beliefs which have been blocking the awareness of God’s Love, and transforms these beliefs. For instance, in order to sustain the belief that I am separate from God, I have had to project an image of a body and give it autonomy. I make it seem as if the body gets sick and suffers and needs magical help to recover. I give it medicines and exercise it and sometimes I have to take it to a doctor to save it.

The Holy Spirit is teaching me that this is insane. The body is only an image of a belief in my mind. It cannot cause anything, being an effect itself. It cannot get sick or suffer or die. When it does these things it is only because it was so directed by the mind. So when it seems I have pain in the body, I really have pain in the mind which I then project onto the body. In this way I convince myself that the pain is real and so is the body because it feels the pain. Because I seem to be feeling pain, I seem to prove that I am the body.

No matter how much care I take to preserve my “self” the body continues to age and to suffer sickness, eventually to die. This is perfectly ego, which always seeks only to fail in what it seeks. I am a part of God, but as ego I see myself as separate and different from ego. I become my own creator, as I see myself as a body. I am not a very good creator, but I am a jealous god. I would rather be sick and suffer than to give into the truth.

I use my pathetic creation to prove that God has no power over me. I can be sick and there is nothing He can do about it.  I prove I can stand outside and apart from God and that He can’t get to me. Better to be fat, unhealthy, in pain, even to die than to subject myself to God. No wonder I feel afraid of Him. I seem to have made God my enemy and my only defense against Him is the pathetically inadequate and weak body.

This is what the Holy Spirit is showing me. And He is showing me the insanity of it all. God is Love. God is Life. I could never be a body and I could never be sick or suffer. I certainly could never die. I can pretend to be outside of Life and Love, but I cannot actually do that. As I look at these thoughts in my mind and ask the Holy Spirit to heal them, and as I become willing to accept the Atonement for them, I begin to awaken to the truth. I can never have a separate will from God because I can never be separate from God.

The miracle is the change of mind that allows me to remember the truth that God and I are joined forever and nothing can come between us, not even my dreams of separation. Just as my beliefs of separation have been projected as if they were outside me, the happier dreams of union are being projected outward as well. They appear as literal miracles in my life.

I need to know something and there it is, in a book or a recording. I didn’t search for it as I didn’t even know what it looked like. I needed it and it was there. I was in pain and remembered that pain is not possible and the pain went away. I was in fear and remembered that fear is not part of God and asked for healing. The fear vanished as if it were smoke blown by the wind. My mind was darkened by a long held grievance, and in a moment of sanity I asked for healing and the grievance disappeared. I cannot even remember what it felt like to hold that grievance. It is a miracle.

I didn’t do any of these things from within the dreamy world of separation. I welcomed the miracle of a healed mind and the miracle was projected onto the world. I know it is a miracle when it comes from outside my ego mind, when I know that Myron could not have done it. The miracle in the world is a symbol of the healed mind that remembers, even if for just a moment, the union of Father and Son.

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