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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 6. 6-30-14

XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 6
6 Out of your natural environment you may well ask, “What is truth?” since truth is the environment by which and for which you were created. You do not know yourself, because you do not know your Creator. You do not know your creations because you do not know your brothers, who created them with you. I have already said that only the whole Sonship is worthy to be co-creator with God, because only the whole Sonship can create like Him. Whenever you heal a brother by recognizing his worth, you are acknowledging his power to create and yours. He cannot have lost what you recognize, and you must have the glory you see in him. He is a co-creator with God with you. Deny his creative power, and you are denying yours and that of God Who created you.

God created me to be a co-creator with Him. The me I speak of here is the true Self which is one with all aspects of Itself. Speaking more clearly, the “me” spoke of here is the Sonship as a whole. We remember ourselves as co-creator as we remember our Oneness. Because this is true, it is just as important that my brother wake up as it is that I wake up. We must know ourselves as whole again.

I wake up my brother by recognizing the truth of who he is. I recognize his worth as an aspect of the Sonship. I do this without regard to appearances. I disregard them because they are not real. The mirrors in a fun house at the carnival might fascinate me, but I am not going to weep because one shows me a distorted vision of myself. Neither will I be misled because the world shows me a distorted vision of my brother.

If my brother is temporarily duped by the fun house mirror effect, I can enlighten him by being clear sighted and not being fooled by the effect myself. I will then acknowledge only his real self. At some point he will notice that I see something he does not see and his mind will open to another vision. This process may be a verbal one, but not necessarily.

My continued faith and trust in him may well be all that is needed to awaken the truth in his mind and help him cultivate his own trust, no matter how weakened it might be. As I help him to recognize his own glory, I am convinced of mine. What a perfect and elegant plan the Atonement is.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7, XI. The State of Grace, P 5

XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 5

5 When a mind has only light, it knows only light. Its own radiance shines all around it, and extends out into the darkness of other minds, transforming them into majesty. The Majesty of God is there, for you to recognize and appreciate and know. Recognizing the Majesty of God as your brother is to accept your own inheritance. God gives only equally. If you recognize His gift in anyone, you have acknowledged what He has given you. Nothing is so easy to recognize as truth. This is the recognition that is immediate, clear and natural. You have trained yourself not to recognize it, and this has been very difficult for you.

Oh my gosh! I want this so much! I want my mind to return to its natural state of light. I want it to be only light. I want to shine that light into every other mind and to transform them. I understand that to know my own light, I must be willing to acknowledge that light in everyone else. Since God gives equally, I will see in another what I believe is in me. And what I see in another will witness to what is in me. I want this!

I understand that to have this, to have the light and be the light and see only the light everywhere I look, I must be willing to relinquish everything that is not light. Yesterday I saw myself choose darkness more than once. And it was over such petty stuff! What was I thinking? On the other hand, I noticed when I did it. I asked that my perceptions be corrected.

Holy Spirit, I am willing to see the effects of the darkness I still hold onto so that I can finally realize that I don’t want it. I am willing to see those effects and to give them over to you. I really do want to awaken from this dark dream and return to light. I understand that to be in the light and to be the light requires total commitment. I am dedicated to this purpose. I am devoted to this practice. I am ready.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7, XI. The State of Grace, P 4

XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 4
4 I call upon you to remember that I have chosen you to teach the Kingdom to the Kingdom. There are no exceptions to this lesson, because the lack of exceptions is the lesson. Every Son who returns to the Kingdom with this lesson in his heart has healed the Sonship and given thanks to God. Everyone who learns this lesson has become the perfect teacher, because he has learned it of the Holy Spirit.

As I read this I felt my heart swell and tears come to my eyes. I (and you) have been chosen to teach the Kingdom to the Kingdom. We didn’t wind up here by accident. We didn’t just happen to study the Course. Life is not random. We are not purposeless. Somehow this is very important to me and I am deeply touched by it. The ego is lying when it says that I am both arrogant and wrong when I think I am a teacher of God.

What I think is key is the next sentence. “There are no exceptions to this lesson, because the lack of exception is the lesson.” This is the truth for all of us. This is our sole purpose right now. We are to give over to the Holy Spirit all the darkness in our mind. As this is done, we will light the world with truth and bring everyone to the Kingdom. We may be given words to say and things to do, but the healing of our own mind is the true lesson we share with all our brothers, along with the recognition that they too are holy. All of us. No exceptions.

It is a glorious profession! And beautiful to think of and to contemplate. At first, however, it seems like the actual process of allowing the light to shine is difficult and tedious, and not a little daunting. But as more and more darkness is removed from the mind, even the day to day work of watching the mind and choosing to release the ego beliefs becomes a real delight. Not even the temporary lapses into ego can dim the joy of this work.

I know what it is that swells my heart as I read this paragraph. It is gratitude.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7, XI. The State of Grace, P 3

XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 3

3 Consider the kingdom you have made and judge its worth fairly. Is it worthy to be a home for a child of God? Does it protect his peace and shine love upon him? Does it keep his heart untouched by fear, and allow him to give always, without any sense of loss? Does it teach him that this giving is his joy, and that God Himself thanks him for his giving? That is the only environment in which you can be happy. You cannot make it, any more than you can make yourself. It has been created for you, as you were created for it. God watches over His children and denies them nothing. Yet when they deny Him they do not know this, because they deny themselves everything. You who could give the Love of God to everything you see and touch and remember, are literally denying Heaven to yourself.

This is another reminder of what Jesus tells us in other places in the Course; we but do this to ourselves. We were created by God from God, and so have everything. Our natural environment was created for us and is in God. But we are choosing to experience something different, which is OK with God, but our choice to have an experience unlike God is painful.

We made the choice. This world and everything happening in it is our own doing. As long as we continue to make this choice, which we do minute by minute, we will deny our true Selves. I cannot experience myself as small and lacking, as pain filled and suffering, as lonely and deprived, and still know I am Divine, lack nothing and could never suffer.

The moment my full memory of the Kingdom returns, the story of time and space disappears. There are only two environments from which to choose; there is Heaven and there is here. They are diametrically opposed and cannot exist, even in our mind, in the same instant. How extremely odd it is that we must be coaxed back into Heaven. We are being offered the opportunity to come out of our present state of amnesia and remember who we are and what we are and where we are. This is not being done against our will. We want this.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 2. 6-23-14

XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 2
2 Grace is the natural state of every Son of God. When he is not in a state of grace, he is out of his natural environment and does not function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment that he has made. He therefore cannot adapt to it, nor can he adapt it to him. There is no point in trying. A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is with God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond anything he can make.

Being with God is the only state that is natural to us and the only state in which we will not experience strain. I thought about the idea of strain and I realized that this was true. I strain to be happy, seeking more money, satisfying relationships, a better body. It is incredible the amount of time and effort I have put into these things in the past hoping something would make me happy.

The sentence that says it all for me is: “There is no point in trying.” This is where I am right now. There is no point in trying to make myself happy through earning more money or going on another diet or getting people to like me. None of this makes me happy. I might get a brief sense of satisfaction, but then I think of something else I believe I need and happiness bursts like a soap bubble when you try to catch it.

So I surrender. I surrender not in the sense of giving up, but I surrender to grace. I will still earn money and ask for guidance in my relationships. I will still watch what I eat and take vitamins and maybe I will even exercise this body if I absolutely have to. But I will not look to these things for happiness. They will just be things I do, not the answer to my quest for peace and joy and love.

It takes a lot of vigilance to notice when I have reverted to being in charge of my happiness through manipulating the world. It is all I have known while in the illusion and I do it unless I deliberately choose not to. I have been doing a lot of computer work the last few days and my hand has started hurting when I type.

The thought in my mind is that I am not happy because my hand hurts. Then the ego mind starts looking for solutions, and this leads to looking for targets onto which I can project the blame for my predicament. The situation gets complicated really fast and impossible to solve to my satisfaction. Just this one small thing causes life here to be a strain, and my day has hardly begun.

I ask Holy Spirit how to see this differently. He reminds me that there is no point in trying to use the world to be happy and no point in trying to manipulate the world to make myself happy. It will just increase the strain. Instead, He directs me toward my purpose. I remember that there is no pain.

I remember that it is not the Will of God that I suffer and so I cannot suffer. (As I type this, the pain in my hand increases exponentially and I see my resistance, but as soon as I see it, I let it go and the pain fades away.) This is my purpose, to use the world to allow the world to be undone. There is an environment in which I can live without strain, but to return to that environment, I must first give up the one I made to take its place.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 1. 6-20-14

XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 1
1 The Holy Spirit will always guide you truly, because your joy is His. This is His Will for everyone because He speaks for the Kingdom of God, which is joy. Following Him is therefore the easiest thing in the world, and the only thing that is easy, because it is not of the world. It is therefore natural. The world goes against your nature, being out of accord with God’s laws. The world perceives orders of difficulty in everything. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable. By demonstrating to yourself there is no order of difficulty in miracles, you will convince yourself that, in your natural state, there is no difficulty at all because it is a state of grace.

Ah, I begin to see why miracles are important. It is through miracles that I express love and it is through accepting that there is no order of difficulty in miracles, I convince myself that in my natural state of grace, there is no difficulty at all. Following Holy Spirit is easy and the only thing that is easy because He speaks for the Kingdom of God and so is not of this insane world.

When I was new to this, my thought was that it sure seems hard to follow the Holy Spirit. It seemed to take great vigilance and it often seemed, at least at first, to go against my own desires and my own safety. Something in me wanted to follow Spirit, and something in me warned me against this urge. But slowly, over time, I have more and more often turned away from the voice of doom, and followed the Holy Spirit. The results have proven to me that I can trust the Voice for God.

I have also learned through the experience of breaking free of the ego’s hold on my mind that it really is easy to follow Spirit. The Holy Spirit is consistent and gentle, and always leads me to joy and peace. The ego, on the other hand, is so erratic and unreliable that I never know where I will end up when I follow it. It’s hard for me to believe I have wasted so much time listening to its counsel when it has so often guided me down the path of confusion and pain.

The Holy Spirit wants only joy for me and knows how to lead me to joy. The ego is not interested in joy. It wants to win. It wants to be right. Clearly, it has no idea how to achieve even these little goals, and when it does manage to win or to be right, the price is often steep, and there is little satisfaction, and no joy.

I want joy. I know that the only way to achieve joy is to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I notice in my life effects that do not come from following that guidance and realize I have slipped back into ego. I may not have a clear indication of when or how this happened and I have learned not to be too concerned about it. 

Figuring out how it happened is often the way ego entangles me and distracts me from what is important. I simply ask for healing and trust that if there is something I need to be aware of, it will be shown to me. As I turn more often from ego to Holy Spirit, my trust in my Guide grows, and the ease of following Spirit becomes obvious.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: X.The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 8. 6-19-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 8
8 Miracles are in accord with the Will of God, Whose Will you do not know because you are confused about what you will. This means that you are confused about what you are. If you are God’s Will and do not accept His Will, you are denying joy. The miracle is therefore a lesson in what joy is. Being a lesson in sharing it is a lesson in love, which is joy. Every miracle is thus a lesson in truth, and by offering truth you are learning the difference between pain and joy.

Jesus says that I am confused about what I am, and that is true for sure! I am confused about my will which I think is different than the Will of God. Since I am the Will of God, this leaves me confused about what I am. God’s Will is joy and love and peace. Because I think I can have a will that is different from God, I deny myself joy and love and peace.

As I allow my mind to be healed, the truth returns to me. This is a miracle. Actually, this is THE miracle from which all true effects extend. As I am healed and I begin to remember what I am, I naturally share what I know, and this sharing is love and love is joy. Through the miracle of a healed mind, the difference between pain and joy which was once obscure to me now becomes clear.

I used to think that pleasure was deciding for myself what I am. I used to think pleasure was successfully defending my right to be different from my brothers and from God, which meant that I must defend against them so that I could maintain my own separate will. I can remember feeling a surge of adrenaline when I seemed to win against another, and believing that was joy. But it was just adrenalin after all, and when it receded all I had left was my fear and guilt.

I still get confused about what I am, and think that it makes me happy to decide on a personal will, but I soon remember that this can’t be right. I cannot overcome what I am, which is the Will of God. No matter how sick or tired I make the body, I have proved nothing. I am not the body. I am the Son of God, His holy Will. No matter how impoverished I seem to be, I change nothing because I was created with everything and I cannot overcome God’s Will that I be everything.

Through the miracle I have discovered that I don’t want to overcome God’s Will. I was created in love and truth and joy and that is all I am. As I accept the miracle of a healed mind, I accept that I am as I was created and I rejoice in that truth! If I become confused today, I ask for the Atonement. I want to remember only what is true.

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