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Study of the Text, II, The Law of the Kingdom, Paragraph 3. 2-27-14

II. The Law of the Kingdom, Paragraph 3
3 Outside the Kingdom, the law that prevails inside is adapted to “What you project you believe.” This is its teaching form, because outside the Kingdom learning is essential. This form implies that you will learn what you are from what you have projected onto others, and therefore believe they are. In the Kingdom there is no teaching or learning, because there is no belief. There is only certainty. God and His Sons, in the surety of being, know that what you extend you are. That form of the law is not adapted at all, being the law of creation. God Himself created the law by creating by it. And His Sons, who create like Him, follow it gladly, knowing that the increase of the Kingdom depends on it, just as their own creation did.

Jesus is helping us to see some basic differences between the world and the Kingdom. In the Kingdom teaching and learning have no place because there is only certainty. There is nothing to teach or to learn. Here in the world teaching and learning are essential because we have forgotten our certainty. I believe different things than you believe and even within my own mind, the things I believe vary according to my experiences.

This seems so normal and natural it is hard for me to imagine not having beliefs. But think how peaceful will be the world when we let go of our desire to choose the form “truth” will take for us, and we simply know what there is to know. Everyone will know the same thing because it will not be a belief, but will be Truth.

In the meantime, I wonder at the absurdity of arguing for a view point. Why would I give up my peace because someone did not agree with the meaning I gave something. I could change my mind about it at any moment, no matter what “it” is. I will find plenty of “proof” to support whatever concept I am in love with at the moment, but my proof is meaningless because it, too, is based on belief, not certainty. Would I really sacrifice Heaven for a belief?

It really makes me laugh when I hear people arguing for their personal understanding of a concept from the Course. I have even done that myself and it is just as funny to me when I notice I am doing it. When this is done, we are allowing our ego to convince us that we need to defend our beliefs even when the belief is about not having a personal, and about beliefs not being certainties.

Having studied the Course for over 30 years now, I have witnessed the shifts my understanding has taken and I expect these shifts will continue. And no matter how close I come to the truth, it is going to be a million miles away from the Truth. I only have words and concepts to work with so how close do I imagine I could come to something I cannot possibly understand from this ego framework from which I am working at this time? Why would I even care about my beliefs, or how someone else understands it?

The other thing I want to always remember is that my projection onto others is teaching me what I believe about myself. This is so basic and so essential to my growing understanding that I remind myself of it often. The world is literally, my mirror. The axiom, “you spot it, you got it,” could not be more true.

Whatever I think is true about someone else, however I see this person, I am only ever really seeing my self reflected there. If I see light then I am seeing my true self reflected in another. If I see darkness I am seeing my own dark thoughts reflected onto this one. When my vision of another is blurred by my projections of darkness, I know to go inward with the Holy Spirit to have my mind healed. I’m seldom confused about that anymore. When I use projection to teach myself, I am teaching what I don’t want to learn and will suffer for it.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, II. The Law of the Kingdom, Paragraph 2. 2-26-14

II. The Law of the Kingdom, Paragraph 2
2 To heal, then, is to correct perception in your brother and yourself by sharing the Holy Spirit with him. This places you both within the Kingdom, and restores its wholeness in your mind. This reflects creation, because it unifies by increasing and integrates by extending. What you project or extend is real for you. This is an immutable law of the mind in this world as well as in the Kingdom. However, the content is different in this world, because the thoughts it governs are very different from the Thoughts in the Kingdom. Laws must be adapted to circumstances if they are to maintain order. The outstanding characteristic of the laws of mind as they operate in this world is that by obeying them, and I assure you that you must obey them, you can arrive at diametrically opposed results. This is because the laws have been adapted to the circumstances of this world, in which diametrically opposed outcomes seem possible because you can respond to two conflicting voices.

We live by the same laws in this world as in the Kingdom. However, those laws have been adapted to the circumstances of this world. The law I am most interested in at this time is the one that says what we project or extend is real for us. In the Kingdom we extend Love because that is all there is to extend. In the world we project from the voice we are listening to and believe. So we can project from love or from fear.

My goal is to hear only the Voice of Love and so project only that. In this way, I can reflect the truth and come as close as possible, while here, to restoring wholeness to my mind and thus to my brother’s mind as well. This is a simple process if I desire it above all other things. If the voice I hear does not reflect love then it is the voice for fear and it is not real or meaningful. I can ignore it and ask for the Voice for Love instead.

If this is what I truly want, then this is what I will have. Since having and being is the same thing, listening only to the Holy Spirit I will be love and that is what I will give because I will have nothing else to give. If I value some form of fear then I will be inconsistent in what I believe and sometimes I will project love and sometimes fear. What I project I believe and so I remain unhealed and I experience separation even within myself. 

This is why I am vigilant for the thoughts in my mind that indicate I am listening to the voice of ego. I have learned to pay attention to my thoughts and to discern their source. I have seen that the outcome of listening to the ego voice is always going to lead to suffering, and listening to the Voice for God will always bring peace to my mind. In this way I am motivated to choose God more often than ego.

Obviously as I make the choice for peace more often I will cease to find value in choosing fear and so will eventually stop listening to ego altogether. This is all that is required of me: I pay attention to my thoughts and notice when they are not in alignment with love and then ask for and accept the Atonement (healing). To the degree I am ready to be healed it is done.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: The Law of the Kingdom, Paragraph 1. 2-25-14

II. The Law of the Kingdom

1 To heal is the only kind of thinking in this world that resembles the Thought of God, and because of the elements they share, can transfer easily to it. When a brother perceives himself as sick, he is perceiving himself as not whole, and therefore in need. If you, too, see him this way, you are seeing him as if he were absent from the Kingdom or separated from it, thus making the Kingdom itself obscure to both of you. Sickness and separation are not of God, but the Kingdom is. If you obscure the Kingdom, you are perceiving what is not of God.

Sometimes I have become discouraged that I will never find the thoughts I think with God in my mind, but really, I do see them even thought I do not always acknowledge them as such. I don’t see them all the time, but more than I give myself credit. Right here Jesus is saying that healing thoughts are the only thoughts that resemble the Thought of God. I have healing thoughts.

I have moments when I see someone’s ego behavior and look right through it to the light beyond. I see who they really are and am in no way fooled by the ego personification that temporarily falsely defines them. This is a healing thought, a thought I think with God. I may or may not see the healing that is occurring, but that part is not my concern. I know the healing is happening for that person and for all of us. We share one ego and so when any aspect of it is healed, all aspects share in that healing.

Conversely, there are times when I am unable to see past the behavior to the truth that never changes. I see the ego behavior and I believe in it, and believe that I am looking at my brother. This happens most often when I am triggered by the behavior. Sometimes I see someone behaving in a way I used to behave, and if I have not forgiven myself I might react to that behavior as if it is an accusatory finger pointing to my sin.

Even then I have an opportunity to see differently. If I am being vigilant for God I will notice what is happening, and realizing my reaction is not really toward the other person, but is caused by thoughts in my mind, I will ask that my mind be healed. This would be a healing thought, and so one I think with God.

There are other ways I heal through seeing only the truth. My eyes show me a sick body, but I know that sickness is not of God and so cannot be real. I see poverty but am not fooled. God is abundant and so poverty is just a mistaken belief and can be undone. These healing thoughts are the counterpart to the creative thoughts I have in the Kingdom.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: The Last Step, Paragraph 7. 2-24-14

I. The Last Step, Paragraph 7

7 God does not take steps, because His accomplishments are not gradual. He does not teach, because His creations are changeless. He does nothing last, because He created first and for always. It must be understood that the word “first” as applied to Him is not a time concept. He is first in the sense that He is the First in the Holy Trinity Itself. He is the Prime Creator, because He created His co-creators. Because He did, time applies neither to Him nor to what He created. The “last step” that God will take was therefore true in the beginning, is true now, and will be true forever. What is timeless is always there, because its being is eternally changeless. It does not change by increase, because it was forever created to increase. If you perceive it as not increasing you do not know what it is. You also do not know Who created it. God does not reveal this to you because it was never hidden. His light was never obscured, because it is His Will to share it. How can what is fully shared be withheld and then revealed?

I don’t know what to say about this. God is not something I can put into words or even understand. My mind is too firmly rooted in time and space right now. What I can say is that God does not hide Himself from me and that He is always available. It is I who is hiding from Him. I continue to remove the blocks in my mind that keep me from knowing what is clearly meant to be accessible to me.

The Course tells us that God takes the last step and then tells us that God does not take steps. The last step taken by God is just a way that we can understand; it is using words to describe something we cannot understand through words. I accept that now, because I no longer have a strong desire to use my ego mind to work things out.

I’m ok with not understanding in the usual way. I am willing to wait until I am ready for the thoughts of God to be revealed to me, knowing from experience that I don’t have to do anything to make this happen.  When I am ready for a truth, it will simply be there. “Jesus, is there anything you want me to know about this?”

Jesus: While you are not God, the Prime Creator, you are like God in every other way. You are all that God is and you have all the creative power that God has. You are part of God and in God. That is all that I can tell you about your relationship to God at this time. What is important for you to know is that while you are identical to God, God is First. He created you, but you cannot create Him. This is the difference and it is a most important difference to you at this time because this is a point of confusion for the separated ones. To see themselves as separate they must necessarily believe that they created themselves.

When I say “you” are like God in every way, I am not speaking of the ego personality self that you most closely identify with, even now. I am speaking of the “you” that is one holy Self. It is the We, the Christ, that I speak of. But that is you and you will know that as yourself when you are no longer confused, just as I know my Self now. At that time you will understand, without the limitation imposed by words, what I am saying to you. In the meantime, it is useful for you to know that what you understand now stands somewhere between wrong and woefully incomplete. Be satisfied with that little bit of understanding and simply continue to follow Guidance until you are out of the wilderness of your confused thinking.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: The Last Step, Paragraph 6. 2-21-14

I. The Last Step, Paragraph 6

6 To think like God is to share His certainty of what you are, and to create like Him is to share the perfect Love He shares with you. To this the Holy Spirit leads you, that your joy may be complete because the Kingdom of God is whole. I have said that the last step in the reawakening of knowledge is taken by God. This is true, but it is hard to explain in words because words are symbols, and nothing that is true need be explained. However, the Holy Spirit has the task of translating the useless into the useful, the meaningless into the meaningful, and the temporary into the timeless. He can therefore tell you something about this last step.

We are getting into the unexplainable. I remember how frustrated I used to get when the Church said in answer to my questions, “It’s a mystery.” Well I don’t know if the last step is a mystery, but certainly we are going to be left without an explanation that the ego will find satisfactory. I doubt the words exist to explain God.

We have closed our minds off from the Divine and the eternal. It is like we have built a little room that keeps the light out and we have existed in darkness for so long that we no longer remember light. Now we want someone to explain it to us.

What can happen is that we can desire the light and then we will be led to take down the walls to our little room and enter the light. This is what A Course in Miracles is doing for us. One carefully planned step at a time, we are being guided to uncover our true desire for the Light and instructed in the dismantling process.

What I can see now in retrospect is that my awakening has been very carefully planned. I often don’t see the circumstances and the lessons as part of the overall plan. In fact, I have often thought they were just mistakes I had made, missteps on my way to Heaven, when in actuality it turns out they were perfect steps on my path leading me out of the darkness and into the light.

Through reading the Text, which introduced me to the idea I had a path and drew me toward it; through doing the lessons, which began the process of changing my mind and increased my willingness for something else; and then through vigilance in watching my mind for wrong minded thoughts and accepting the Atonement for them, I have begun to dismantle my little room.

Light has entered my mind, and while I have not invited it into every dark corner yet, I know something of light and I so my desire for light increases daily. My anticipation grows as I remove more obstacles to the light, and now I watch eagerly as my Guide directs me to the next dark place and waits for permission to shine light into it.

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Study of the Text, I. The Last Step, Paragraph 5. 1-20-14

I. The Last Step, Paragraph 5
5 I gave only love to the Kingdom because I believed that was what I was. What you believe you are determines your gifts, and if God created you by extending Himself as you, you can only extend yourself as He did. Only joy increases forever, since joy and eternity are inseparable. God extends outward beyond limits and beyond time, and you who are co-creator with Him extend His Kingdom forever and beyond limit. Eternity is the indelible stamp of creation. The eternal are in peace and joy forever.

I woke up at 3:00 and my mind was filled with ego fear thoughts. I don’t know why it is that sometimes, when I am tired usually, all the unhealed thoughts come up for me to look at. At first I felt a little of the old vulnerability as I started following the fear thoughts down the rabbit hole. But even in that half asleep state, I knew I didn’t want to go there.

I lay there asking for another way to see. I listen to the Course at night playing softly in my sleep and suddenly I focused on what was being said. He was talking about fear. I lay there and listened to the soothing and helpful words.  At first there was a sense of struggle as the ego continued its litany of “what if” thoughts. I steadfastly refused to turn my attention back to the ego fear thoughts, and my willingness to hear the Voice for God won out.

I looked into my mind for the thoughts I think with God. I remembered that it is not God’s Will that I suffer. I remembered that the future does not exist and returned my mind to the present moment where all is as it should be. I lay here in this rather nice hotel room with the comforting words of Jesus softly filling the room. What else could I want right this moment? What is there to fear?

I can find fear thoughts only if I leave the moment and project myself into some imagined experience in an uncertain future. Why would I choose to do that? Right now, right this moment I am choosing love over fear and in so doing, I am healing the Sonship of the belief in fear. I am safe in God where I have always been and will always be. God loves me and I love Him. Ahh. The true thoughts are right there in my mind. Why choose to focus on the ego fear thoughts instead? No good reason.

Jesus gave only love because that was all he believed about himself. If I hold onto the belief in fear, the gift I have to share will be fear. I will share love sometimes, but at other times I will share fear, and what I give to others I give to myself. As I teach fear, I learn fear. Do you see the closed cycle?

There is a way out of it, though, and it begins with a little willingness. At one time, I had a little willingness to remember who I am, a little willingness to let go of my separate will.  As I practiced that willingness it grew and it continues to grow. One day my desire to be only the love I am in truth will be so great, there will be no room for fear. This morning at three o’clock I made another decision for God and the day I know myself as only love got another step closer.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: The Last Step, Paragraph 4continued. 2-19-14

I. The Last Step, Paragraph 4
4 The ego, on the other hand, always demands reciprocal rights, because it is competitive rather than loving. It is always willing to strike a bargain, but it cannot understand that to be like another means that no bargains are possible. To gain you must give, not bargain. To bargain is to limit giving, and this is not God’s Will. To will with God is to create like Him. God does not limit His gifts in any way. You are His gifts, and so your gifts must be like His. Your gifts to the Kingdom must be like His gifts to you.

A Course in Miracles introduces me to a God so unlike the one I learned about in traditional religion. That God loved me only when I was obedient, and punished me when I was not. The God I used to believe in was a bargain maker. It seems so obvious to me now that this God is simply a reflection of the ego and not God at all. God gives and only gives. He has no conditions on His giving. He gives because that is His nature, and because He created me from His nature, as an extension of His nature, I too, give without condition. So this thing I seem to be now, this bargain maker, is clearly not me.

Becoming aware of the beliefs I hold that do not reflect my true nature is the first step in returning to my senses. I ask that these beliefs be brought to my attention. How do I still reflect the belief that love is a contract, a bargain to be struck? How do I try to set boundaries and limits on love? I want to be aware of these misconceptions in my mind so that I can look with Spirit and allow them to be undone for me. As the answers to my prayer begin to play across my mind I see that they are many and often subtle.

I thought I needed my daughter to answer a question for me before I could go on with my plans. She seemed to be ignoring her texts and her phone calls. I felt annoyed and frustrated. I felt rejected. Because my feelings were mostly focused inward, and carefully hidden behind a gentler façade than I was actually feeling (a slight twinge of annoyance is nothing but a veil drawn over intense fury, Lesson 21), I was able to avoid seeing the hidden bargain.

Looking honestly with Holy Spirit I am able to see the bargain. If my daughter will show me love, respect, and attention, then I will love her above all things and put her first in my life. If she fails to live up to her part of the bargain, I will turn on her in carefully cloaked rage. I can’t let her see the full extent of my fury because I want to renegotiate the bargain, so I use more subtle methods to bring her back into line, maybe guilt and manipulation. Could I have ever thought this was love? And yet it passes for love in most people’s relationships.

Many relationships themselves are an attempt to limit love. “I will single you out and love you in a special way if you will love me in that same way.” Isn’t this the bargain that is typically made between two people who “fall in love?” What if I simply loved and allowed that love to flow everywhere? What if there were no boundaries on my love?

I could still live with only one person, I could even marry that person. But why should that be a special relationship? Why should marriage to one person limit the flow of love? Yet, that is the way we typically define being in love. Two people find each other so special that the “love” they feel for each other is different than the love they feel for others. That is like building a wall around love to contain it. This is not the nature of love and so what is felt is no longer love. The bargain that is struck between two people to limit love is no longer about love, but is now about need and the fear of loss.

I see the thoughts in my mind about reciprocal giving such as the ones that I noticed when my daughter failed to answer my call. These kind of thoughts occur in nearly all my relationships. Mostly they just float on by, though sometimes they slow down a bit as I consider them, deciding whether or not I believe the thought. Very rarely now, I choose to believe it for awhile until I get tired of suffering, then I let it go. It is a relief and wonderfully freeing not to be blindly attached to that belief anymore.

Where I am still attached to a belief in limiting my love is in the special relationship. I still do not allow my love to flow unimpeded by limits of any kind. I try to direct it to some people and try to withhold it from others. I cannot, of myself, do anything about this. What I can do is desire to experience love as it truly is, not what I try to make of it. My desire is an invitation to healing.

I notice the times when I try to direct love and ask that my mind be healed of such foolish and unproductive beliefs. I do this as often as I need to and allow the desire for love to be love become stronger until it overwhelms the need to be special. I must be getting closer because I can now imagine my love flowing like a strong and wide river, encompassing all in its path. I laugh at the idea of the river trying to avoid certain people, or getting dammed up by certain other people.

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