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Study of the Text, C. Be Vigilant Only For God and His Kingdom, Paragraph 2. 1-31-14

C. Be Vigilant Only for God and His Kingdom, Paragraph 2
2 The Holy Spirit does not teach you to judge others, because He does not want you to teach error and learn it yourself. He would hardly be consistent if He allowed you to strengthen what you must learn to avoid. In the mind of the thinker, then, He is judgmental, but only in order to unify the mind so it can perceive without judgment. This enables the mind to teach without judgment, and therefore to learn to be without judgment. The undoing is necessary only in your mind, so that you will not project, instead of extend. God Himself has established what you can extend with perfect safety. Therefore, the Holy Spirit’s third lesson is:

Be vigilant only for God and His Kingdom.

I have learned to be vigilant for God and His Kingdom, but that was not always the case. I have been vigilant for the ego for many years. An example of being vigilant for the ego is attack thoughts. This morning I woke up thinking about something I forgot to do for a customer. I lay there listening to my mind.

I heard that irritating little voice attack me for my carelessness. Then it attacked my customer for not taking care of his own business. Then it attacked my fellow workers for not doing their part to prevent this. The ego doesn’t care who is attacked as long as I am attacking and defending. If I am attacking or defending, I am being vigilant for the ego.

I used to be vigilant for any sign that I was under attack. I expected to find them and so, of course, I did. I had not yet learned to question the belief that I was a victim of the world I saw and I completely believed this. As a victim or potential victim of the world, I had to be on the lookout all the time. I had to be ready to defend myself against what I saw as unpredictable and unfair attacks. It’s a wonder I had time to do anything else. It takes a lot of effort to be this vigilant.

The good news is that by the time I discovered that I am not the victim of the world I see, but actually the maker of the world, I had established the fact that I can be vigilant. Now I just needed to turn that vigilance toward God rather than the ego. So this morning as I lay there berating myself (and everyone else) for forgetting to do this favor for my customer, I was also watching my thoughts about it.

First I would be anxious and would make plans about how to mitigate the fallout from the situation. This is me identifying with the little mind. Then, from the seat of the observer mind, I would become aware of these thoughts as if I were watching all this on the big screen, and it was hilarious and I would laugh. Then I would slip right back into the ego drama of it all. I switched back and forth for awhile knowing that I was torturing myself with my conflicted thinking.

Finally I noticed Holy Spirit was urging me to get out of bed. I did so and automatically began my morning ritual of coffee and prayerful journaling. As soon as I got up and started my morning, the conflict resolved itself. My vigilance for God means more to me than my vigilance for ego. I gave the attack thoughts over to Holy Spirit to be judged and the situation resolved.

I think getting out of bed was symbolic for me of choosing against ego. It was like washing my hands of ego. As soon as I did it, I felt relieved. It’s funny how the mind works and it’s neat that I don’t have to understand it; I only have to follow the guidance of One Who does. While I was being vigilant for ego, the attacks seemed real and justified, and defending myself seemed urgent indeed.

It was hard to pull my attention away from it, but when I became vigilant for the Kingdom, the idea of attack seemed ludicrous, and my mind returned to peace. From the peaceful mind I teach peace and I learn it. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for relieving me of the burden of judging. I gladly surrender judgment to You.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 9. 1-30-14

C. Be Vigilant Only for God and His Kingdom, Paragraph 1
1 We said before that the Holy Spirit is evaluative, and must be. He sorts out the true from the false in your mind, and teaches you to judge every thought you allow to enter it in the light of what God put there. Whatever is in accord with this light He retains, to strengthen the Kingdom in you. What is partly in accord with it He accepts and purifies. But what is out of accord entirely He rejects by judging against. This is how He keeps the Kingdom perfectly consistent and perfectly unified. Remember, however, that what the Holy Spirit rejects the ego accepts. This is because they are in fundamental disagreement about everything, being in fundamental disagreement about what you are. The ego’s beliefs on this crucial issue vary, and that is why it promotes different moods. The Holy Spirit never varies on this point, and so the one mood He engenders is joy. He protects it by rejecting everything that does not foster joy, and so He alone can keep you wholly joyous.

One of the beliefs that Holy Spirit purifies is time. We are told not to stay in the past, which doesn’t exist and not to send our mind into the future, which doesn’t exist. This is the way the ego uses time to keep us in the illusion. The Holy Spirit uses time to awaken us. All I have to do is make a decision for awakening and the Holy Spirit helps me to see things differently.

Yesterday I was enjoying the leisurely morning of a snow day. We didn’t actually get snow, but rather ice. Either way, though, the south doesn’t tend to fare well in this kind of weather. We are so unprepared for it. No snowplows, no salting of the roads and no one has snow tires. So I got the day off, two days actually. I love it. I still woke up early, and went straight to my meditative writing and posting. But today it was done at a very leisurely pace.

I also did other things, too. I worked on two of the Pathways of Light courses I am doing with other people. I read and watched a John Mark Stroud video. I made homemade bread and drank hot chocolate. Just a really nice two days. But yesterday I remembered I would be going back to work the next day. Instantly I was out of the now moment and into the future, a future which I based on my experiences from the past. My little bubble of contentment burst.

But (yay for me) I realized that I was misusing time and in so doing, I was destroying my own happiness. I changed my mind. I let the thought that I need to think about tomorrow, and the thought that I know what tomorrow should look like, dissolve. Letting it go right away was good. If I let it settle in for a stay, it would be harder to get rid of it. This is the right use of time, this catching wrong-minded thoughts and letting them go to the Holy Spirit.

As I continue to allow the Holy Spirit to choose for me, many thoughts are being healed. I try to keep an “I don’t know” mind. In this way I give up judging, planning and deciding on my own. One Who knows does this for me. I just keep my mind open and ready to receive.
.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 9. 1-29-14

B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 9
9 The second step, then, is still perceptual, although it is a giant step toward the unified perception that reflects God’s knowing. As you take this step and hold this direction, you will be pushing toward the center of your thought system, where the fundamental change will occur. At the second step progress is intermittent, but the second step is easier than the first because it follows. Realizing that it must follow is a demonstration of a growing awareness that the Holy Spirit will lead you on.

I see many signs in my life that Holy Spirit is guiding each step I take. I wind up in just the right place, talking to just the right person. I find the next idea that I am ready for.  Sometimes I foolishly believe that I did these things on my own, that I can explain logically how I got from step A to step B. But when I stand back and look at my life I see that this is an illusion. It was all planned for me by One Who cares for me.

The first step, “To have, give all to all”, was hard to understand. Even now I have to stop a moment and remind myself why this is true. It completely turns the separation idea on its head, and my inability to hold onto the idea is a reflection of how much of my faith is still directed to separation.

I must be further along in my understanding than I think, though, because I completely understand and accept the second step, “To have peace, teach peace to learn it.” This makes perfect sense to me. I do this all the time. I teach and in my teaching, I learn. I do this through action, through words, and through my writing.

The Manual for Teachers says this: “The course, on the other hand, emphasizes that to teach is to learn, so that teacher and learner are the same.” It also says of the teachers of God, “They are not perfect, or they would not be here. Yet it is their mission to become perfect here, and so they teach perfection over and over, in many, many ways, until they have learned it.”

And so this is what I do. I teach to learn. I teach peace to learn peace. Every time I choose peace I see the results and I am motivated to choose peace again. As I teach peace others are affected by this lesson and they become motivated to choose peace. And on yet another level, as this choice is played out in our world, the mind shifts, and we all are affected by this shift.

We can see the effects of this shift, this desire for peace within the mind, as we look at the world. There have been some outstanding teachers of peace such as Mahatma Ghandi who taught change through non-violence. He played out his role on a really big stage and so affected the way many thought. The many little changes shifted the mind that we are.

We have as a whole, moved from believing everything our governments tell us, and from believing that war is our patriotic duty, to believing that peace is a better choice. It is not a complete shift, but the direction of the shift is clear. When I was a child we learned that we should follow our political leaders without question, and that going to war was the only way to protect our country and ourselves. We didn’t question this, and those who did so were considered unpatriotic and were looked on with suspicion.

Later as a teenager and a young adult, all of this shifted. We rebelled against this idea and embraced the idea that peace makers were the real heroes. Through teachings like A Course in Miracles we are accelerating this shift as we learn to see each other as an extension of our self, and to desire for another only what we would want for ourselves. We are learning that peace is all we want.

For most of us, teaching peace to learn peace is happening on a much smaller stage. We find ourselves being attacked in some small way at work, and instead of rallying our “troops” and going to war against our antagonist, we choose forgiveness. Don’t think that because the stage is smaller it is less important in healing the mind. Each time any of us choose peace over attack, the mind responds to this miracle. Because Jesus is directing this chain of Atonement, our choice is more effective than we could ever know.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 8. 1-28-14

B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 8
8 This is still a preliminary step, since having and being are still not equated. It is, however, more advanced than the first step, which is really only the beginning of the thought reversal. The second step is a positive affirmation of what you want. This, then, is a step in the direction out of conflict, since it means that alternatives have been considered, and one has been chosen as more desirable. Nevertheless, the term “more desirable” still implies that the desirable has degrees. Therefore, although this step is essential for the ultimate decision, it is clearly not the final one. Lack of order of difficulty in miracles has not yet been accepted, because nothing is difficult that is wholly desired. To desire wholly is to create, and creating cannot be difficult if God Himself created you as a creator.

I have chosen peace as preferable to chaos and I really do want peace. I want it more than I ever have before, because now that I have had some sustained peace in my life I don’t want to lose it. This is good. It is through contrast that we learn what we really want, and deciding on a thing is how we get it. So now that I know I want peace, I can have it. I have it not because of anything I do; I have it because I truly desire it.

And yet, I don’t always choose peace. I still sometimes choose conflict. This is how I know that I am still confused. I still need the Holy Spirit to heal my mind because I do not wholly desire peace. It is important to remember that if I did wholly desire peace I would have it. I am a powerful creator and so it is not difficult to choose peace and have peace.

It feels difficult sometimes because I still want other things as well as peace. What do I want more than I want peace? What do I want so much that I am willing to tolerate a conflicted mind? I notice that I still want to be right. I still want a personal will, a personal self. I still want to defend against God. I can hardly believe this is true, but there it is in my mind.

At the same time, I know I want peace and so when I see behaviors and thoughts in my mind that are driven by these beliefs, I ask for the Atonement and I accept it as I am able. This is my only part. I see that I am not at peace and I choose peace by asking that my mind be healed. It is simple and when it does not seem to work, I know that I am still resisting, still choosing something else. No problem. I simply choose again.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 7. 1-27-14

B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 7
7 You are not asked to make insane decisions, although you can think you are. It must, however, be insane to believe that it is up to you to decide what God’s creations are. The Holy Spirit perceives the conflict exactly as it is. Therefore, His second lesson is:
To have peace, teach peace to learn it.

I have been looking at attack thoughts and how they teach me I am vulnerable. Mostly I don’t attack and when I do I catch it and ask that my mind be healed in the belief in attack. I see in this section of the Text why I don’t want to attack. When I attack, myself or others (I don’t think there is any difference), I am insane. In attacking I am deciding what God’s creations are.

I don’t read the paper or watch news very much. I have an app on my phone that gives me a few headlines every day, much of it local. As I would read these apps, which often came with pictures of the miscreants, I would notice my judgmental thoughts. Sometimes it was just a passing thought and sometimes the judgment had a lot more venom.

Regardless of how strongly I felt about it, my judgment is saying that I am deciding who this one is. I am disregarding God’s decision that His creation is good, and that He is well pleased with His Son. Instead, I am declaring that this one does not live up to that Divine declaration. I am saying that he is something else. This, of course, opens the possibility (probability) that I am not what God created either.

In a single casual judgment I have, in my mind, undone what God has done. No wonder I believe in guilt and fear, and think I live a life of suffering, a life so frightening and so painful that death seems the only solution. And even in that, I am redefining reality in spite of God Who knows nothing of pain, suffering and death. I am so insane.

It is a temporary insanity, though, and there is a solution. There is within my mind a failsafe, the answer to my insanity. The Holy Spirit is placed in the mind where the confusion exists. It undoes the insane thinking, as I am ready to let it go. There are many prayers, lessons, affirmations, and mantras that I can use to help me decide that I want healing. But it is the desire to be released that allows the Holy Spirit to heal me.

Now when I read those news blurbs, especially when there is a picture, I look into their eyes and tell them the truth. I tell them that they are innocent, that nothing they have done or that has been done to them, changes that. I tell them that it is insane to believe they can undo what God has done and that, despite appearances, it cannot happen. I tell them the truth about themselves, and so I learn the truth about me. I teach peace rather than attack. I teach peace to learn peace.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 6. 1-24-14

B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 6
6 There can be no conflict between sanity and insanity. Only one is true, and therefore only one is real. The ego tries to persuade you that it is up to you to decide which voice is true, but the Holy Spirit teaches you that truth was created by God, and your decision cannot change it. As you begin to realize the quiet power of the Holy Spirit’s Voice, and Its perfect consistency, it must dawn on your mind that you are trying to undo a decision that was irrevocably made for you. That is why I suggested before that you remind yourself to allow the Holy Spirit to decide for God for you.

I have been living under the misconception that it is up to me to decide what reality is. I have only two options, I can believe the ego version of reality or I can believe what I hear from the Holy Spirit. But regardless of which I choose to believe, I do not affect reality and only the Holy Spirit speaks the truth. I don’t get to decide what is true, only if I want to believe the truth. Reality is not up for grabs.

Seriously, I am tired of choosing insanity. I am ready to awaken from the dream and live consistently from the truth. I can do this and it is simple to do so. As soon as I recognize that I have chosen the wrong voice, and this is when I am not wholly at peace and in joy, I choose again. I choose the truth by allowing the Holy Spirit to decide for God for me. I really don’t need to make it any more complicated than that, and the desire to do anything else is just a delaying tactic.

This morning I have felt mildly anxious about the weather. Should I go to work or stay off the icy streets? Are they really icy, or did the weather man over state the situation? It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but the ego makes it a big deal. Using the ego mind, I go back in time to other times we had bad weather and use that experience to make this decision.

This is not all that helpful because that time was not exactly like this time and that time I made the decision based on shaky evidence as well. I am dragging the past into the present, which guarantees the future will be the same as the past. This is not what I want to do anymore. This is not joyful or peaceful and so it is not reality regardless of how deeply involved I become in the ego thinking about it.

The ego mind takes into consideration what my boss will think, and soon I find myself having this imaginary conversation with her in which I defend my decision and soon I notice I am angry with her. She hasn’t said a word actually, and I don’t know what she would say. I just project my anxiety onto her and make her guilty, and base my decision on this highly suspect information.

I am projecting and then perceiving wrongly. I am reinforcing the belief in separation and in the belief in attack as defense. I am teaching myself that I am vulnerable and need defense and that my brother is my enemy. This is not joyful or peaceful, so I am not living in reality, even though I am using the ego mind to make it seem real.

Did I say I was mildly anxious? By now the anxiety level is rising considerably.  This is just an example of how I think I can affect reality. I hear all this stuff going on in my mind and I believe what I hear. I believe that I am a victim of the weather and an uncaring boss and that my very life is in danger if I make the wrong decision.

The Holy Spirit waits patiently for me to turn to Him to hear the truth. Finally, I ask Him to decide for God for me, and I get on with my morning writing and posting. I wonder how the story will end. When I got to this journal on the Text, I saw what a good example my earlier anxiety was for this very paragraph. That happens a lot. My life gives me an opportunity to practice what it is that I am to learn today. So I started writing about it.

When I got to the part about my imaginary argument with my boss, my phone beeped and I saw I had a text from her. It said that the bridges were closed and she wasn’t going to work until it was safe. By now I was no longer anxious because I had asked to know the truth rather than to pretend to make up my own reality, and it just made me smile to see how simply and perfectly the story unfolded without my interference.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 5. 1-23-14

B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 5
5 The way out of conflict between two opposing thought systems is clearly to choose one and relinquish the other. If you identify with your thought system, and you cannot escape this, and if you accept two thought systems which are in complete disagreement, peace of mind is impossible. If you teach both, which you will surely do as long as you accept both, you are teaching conflict and learning it. Yet you do want peace, or you would not have called upon the Voice for peace to help you. Its lesson is not insane; the conflict is.

It seems self evident to state that the way out of two opposing thought systems is to choose one and relinquish the other, but if you are trying to do this, you probably have noticed that while the concept is simple, it is not always that easy. Using the same power of creation that is our inheritance we have made a complex illusion and we have done an excellent job of hiding the path out. Knowing the day would come when we were ready to go home, the Guide was given us by our Father. It is in the mind patiently waiting on our call for help.

Lesson 22 in the Workbook says we can escape from the world we see by giving up our attack thoughts. Then it gives us the steps that take us out of the illusion. We have only two things to do; recognize the attack thoughts in our mind, and want to let them go. This is something we can all do. It requires only willingness, and our willingness will increase as we use it.

The only reason any of us are still in the illusion is because we are conflicted about what we want. We want peace, but at the same time we want to attack ourselves and others. How can we be at peace if we are at war? Have you ever gone to bed at night feeling disappointed in yourself that you did not remember to do your lesson that day, or that you were harsh with a co-worker? That is an attack thought and you are at war with yourself.

Before I became vigilant for these attack thoughts I often didn’t recognize that they were attack thoughts. When I did see an attack thought I didn’t correlate it to the way I felt. For instance, it felt perfectly natural to me to judge myself. If I didn’t remember to do my Lesson I never considered any reaction other than judgment and self condemnation.

I started and stopped the Lessons many times over the years because of this behavior. I would get to a lesson that I felt resistant to and would “forget” to do it, or would not do it very well. I would judge myself for it and would fear I could never do this and so was condemned to repeat this life over and over and never get out of it. I was conflicted because I knew I wanted to wake up, but I also wanted to avoid the lessons that scared me.

It was a miserable place to be. Truly it is like a war is being waged in my own mind. The way I handled it was to stop doing the lessons, then my desire to wake up would kick in and I would start over. No wonder I spent years being depressed. Who wouldn’t be under these circumstances?

Because I am ready to wake up, I kept doing the Lessons, and asking that my mind be healed. At first the conflict was intense because I wanted to avoid waking up almost as much as I wanted to wake up. However, I would watch my thoughts and with the little willingness I had, I would ask for healing. As I did this my willingness grew and my mind became less conflicted. I learned not to judge the thoughts I found there and that made the process easier. Eventually I could ask with conviction that the Holy Spirit undo what I had done.

I am certain that it is not necessary to take as long as I did to reach that level of conviction. I did it one very small step at a time, and it seems it was necessary for me to do it that way at that time. After all, if I could have done it differently, I would have. But I have since discovered that I can stop chipping away at these obstacles to love’s presence with a toothpick, and just blast them out of my path with a strong desire to be free of conflict.

So now I notice attack thoughts based on beliefs such as lack, loss, neediness, fear, guilt, pain, suffering and death, and instead of asking that my mind be healed of the particular form of that thought, I ask that my mind be healed of the belief driving that thought. For instance, I notice that I am afraid of not having enough money to pay a bill. Instead of asking that my mind be healed of that thought, I recognize that the thought represents fear of loss and lack, and I ask that my mind be healed of the belief in lack and loss.

I couldn’t do that before because I could not believe it was possible to not experience that fear. But chipping away at the many different forms that thought took, and experiencing the healing that came with my sincere desire to be free of a certain thought, I am now ready to know that I can be free of the belief in lack and loss. I am still in conflict because I am still unwilling to fully release the belief in lack and loss, and I still want peace.

I am not as conflicted though, because I have proven to myself over and over that letting go of that belief is an attainable goal, and so my desire for peace is much stronger than it used to be.  Now when I notice a thought of loss or lack, I am excited to find it because looking at that thought with the Holy Spirit is my out and I know that I want out. I ask that I be healed of the belief in lack and loss that sourced that particular thought. It is so much easier now to let go.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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