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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: IV.The Gift of Freedom, Paragraph 1. 8-18-14

IV. The Gift of Freedom
1 If God’s Will for you is complete peace and joy, unless you experience only this you must be refusing to acknowledge His Will. His Will does not vacillate, being changeless forever. When you are not at peace it can only be because you do not believe you are in Him. Yet He is All in all. His peace is complete, and you must be included in it. His laws govern you because they govern everything. You cannot exempt yourself from His laws, although you can disobey them. Yet if you do, and only if you do, you will feel lonely and helpless, because you are denying yourself everything.

I have been out of peace since yesterday. I have a very full schedule for a couple of months and I have been anxious about getting everything done. I am afraid I will run out of time or forget to do something. It is an old story for me, this battle with time. The problem is not time. The problem is that I am refusing to acknowledge God’s Will. It is not that I lack peace, because it is not possible that I be outside peace. To be outside peace I would have to be outside God and there is no “outside God” for me to be.

Peace is the law of God and I cannot exempt myself from it. However, I can disobey God’s laws and as Jesus says, when I do I feel lonely and helpless. I feel this way because I have denied myself everything. This is exactly how I feel when I become anxious about time. I feel lonely and helpless. If I allow myself to stay in that state very long, I get panicky as the ego mind adds more and more upsetting scenarios.

So yesterday afternoon, this anxiety reached a level I could not ignore. I started taking care of a few things, fiddling with the scheduling, writing myself notes. I was busy, busy in the world trying to fix the effects of my problem. All I did was move things around. As I read this morning’s paragraph, I remembered that the source of all problems is in my mind, not in the world. The world is just a picture of the problem in my mind. It is an enactment of my thoughts and beliefs.

I don’t need that old story about time running out. Time is not my enemy. Actually, time is the tool that I am using to heal my mind, so it is my friend. I am happy to release the notion that there is never enough time. I asked the Holy Spirit to remove that old story from my mind and free me of its affects. I don’t want it and I don’t need it.

As I did this I realized that I am not behind on anything. I had a couple of things I actually needed to do this weekend, and they are done. The anxiety is about what I will need to do in the future, so I am worrying about what has not happened and may never happen. That’s just crazy. I also realized that I have a long weekend coming up and that I can use it to catch up. As soon as I let go of the problem created by my thinking mind, answers began to show up without my effort.

The thing that I want never to forget is that I don’t actually “lose” my peace; I push my peace away. It is a deliberate act on my part. Loss of peace is always the refusal on my part to acknowledge God’s law, which is complete peace and joy. I am like a recalcitrant child, refusing to be happy, choosing misery instead, just because I can. Always, I come back to that simple sentence in the Course, “You but do this to yourself.” I am equally free to surrender to His law and accept that I have everything because I was given everything.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: III.The Holy Encounter, Paragraph 8. 8-15-14

III. The Holy Encounter, P 8
8 Power and glory belong to God alone. So do you. God gives whatever belongs to Him because He gives of Himself, and everything belongs to Him. Giving of yourself is the function He gave you. Fulfilling it perfectly will let you remember what you have of Him, and by this you will remember also what you are in Him. You cannot be powerless to do this, because this is your power. Glory is God’s gift to you, because that is what He is. See this glory everywhere to remember what you are.

Power and glory belong to God and so do I. I belong to God. I love to think that. I belong to God. Because it is His nature to create by giving Himself, He gave me everything that belongs to Him and it is my function to do the same, because it is the function He gave me. In fulfilling my function, I will know what I have and what I am. It won’t be just words and concepts, but will be what I know.

In addition, I am told that I am not powerless to do this because He gave me His power also. Finally, I am told that Glory is God’s gift to me, and that to remember what I am I must see this glory everywhere. I restated everything this paragraph said because I wanted to be sure I understood it.

It was hard for me to get what Jesus was telling me, and I’m not sure why. He seems to be telling me that God creates by giving all of Himself to His creations and that I am to do that as well. I think the reason I had trouble understanding at first is that I was thinking of myself as the ego self, as if he were talking to Myron the character in my story.

The ego personality cannot imagine what to do with those words. It has no idea how to give all of itself. Giving even a bit of itself often seems like a burden, and generally it gives only because it expects something in return. However, as I realized that this was not instructions to the ego, but to my true self, it began to make sense.

I don’t remember what this feels like, but the memory is in my mind somewhere, so I can retrieve it. I can find that memory as I let go of the little self I made to take the place of my true self. Jesus reminds me of my power and glory and this is something else I don’t remember, but it is incentive to do the work necessary to reach the truth in my mind.

First I know I have the power to do so, and I want to know my glory. I am also given a clue as to how to begin this search. I am to look for the glory everywhere, because if it is anywhere, it is everywhere. Not just in some people or in special places, but everywhere. I put this into practice in very simple and practical ways.

When I see that I am looking with my ego at another ego, I remember that this can’t be right and I ask that the Holy Spirit correct my perception. I ask to see the glory that is right before me. I ask for vision. I make no exceptions. I leave no one out. And I don’t tilt my head at just the right angle, squint my eyes and hold my tongue just right.

I don’t try to see glory through these eyes the ego made. I simply request that the glory that is of God be revealed to me. I give my willingness to see it. This must work because I am simply following the instructions I have been given and because I have been given the power to do this. Actually, I know this works because I have experienced it to some degree. Now I am willing to see as God sees. I open my heart to this. I am willing to put aside all other goals the ego has offered me.

So what does this have to do with the holy encounter? I understand now that it is the holy encounter. I encounter a brother and choose to disregard his appearance and truly see him. I see into him. And the glory I see there is reflected back to me, as I realize that he is the mirror in which I see myself. It is an amazing thing to glimpse my holiness in this way, and the reason I am willing to accept this as my function, and to look into everyone rather than looking at them.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: III.The Holy Encounter, Paragraph 7. 8-15-14

III. The Holy Encounter, P 7
7 You can encounter only part of yourself because you are part of God, Who is everything. His power and glory are everywhere, and you cannot be excluded from them. The ego teaches that your strength is in you alone. The Holy Spirit teaches that all strength is in God and therefore in you. God wills no one suffer. He does not will anyone to suffer for a wrong decision, including you. That is why He has given you the means for undoing it. Through His power and glory all your wrong decisions are undone completely, releasing you and your brother from every imprisoning thought any part of the Sonship holds. Wrong decisions have no power, because they are not true. The imprisonment they seem to produce is no more true than they are.

In choosing separation we made a wrong decision, but God does not will that we suffer for it. He wants only our happiness and so has given us the means to correct our error. This original error is repeated over and over in our lives, appearing in different forms, but it is all the same error.

The ego is always trying to find ways to correct my errors or to project them onto others in an attempt to make me feel safer, but I am not meant to correct my errors alone because I am not alone. That is just another mistake. I have been given a Corrector and the way to make use of that gift is to turn my guilty thoughts over to Him to be undone.

I made mistakes when I was raising my children and for a long time I suffered for those errors. But then I learned that I have a Holy Spirit that undoes this error and ends my suffering. When I have guilt thoughts about parenting, I remember that God does not will I suffer for that error and I ask the Holy Spirit to remove from my mind the belief that I am forever imprisoned by a wrong decision. I ask that He release me from my fear by undoing my decision.

I made mistakes in my relationships, and mistakes as a teacher of God. I made wrong decisions many times, and all these wrong decisions were a reflection of the decision for separation. But none of these decisions, not the original error or any of the reflective errors is real and so they have no real power and are easily undone by One Who was created for that purpose. As I allow the Holy Spirit to undo these wrong decisions that I seem to make daily, I am allowing Him to correct the original error and free us all from our belief in guilt.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 8, II. The Holy Encounter P 6. 7-31-14

III. The Holy Encounter, P 6
6 The Kingdom cannot be found alone, and you who are the Kingdom cannot find yourself alone. To achieve the goal of the curriculum, then, you cannot listen to the ego, whose purpose is to defeat its own goal. The ego does not know this, because it does not know anything. But you can know it, and you will know it if you are willing to look at what the ego would make of you. This is your responsibility, because once you have really looked at it you will accept the Atonement for yourself. What other choice could you make? Having made this choice you will understand why you once believed that, when you met someone else, you thought he was someone else. And every holy encounter in which you enter fully will teach you this is not so.

Two very important ideas got my attention in this paragraph. The first is that to achieve the goal of the curriculum, I cannot listen to the ego because the ego doesn’t know anything. It is my responsibility to look at what the ego would make of me and accept the Atonement for myself instead. I am convinced of this having done just that for several years.

I continue to be vigilant for the thoughts and beliefs that the ego mind offers. I pay attention to my feelings and my actions and words so that I can be aware of what they tell me about my beliefs. It is easy to mistake understanding a concept for healing. I can say all the right words, and I can understand intellectually, and even accept intellectually, what A Course in Miracles is teaching me. However, unless I am living them, they are just information.

How do I know if I am living what I am learning? I just look at my life. How do I feel? Am I peaceful and happy? If not, then I need to pay closer attention. I need to become aware of what thought I am accepting as true that is really an ego thought, and then accept the Atonement for that mistake. In accepting the Atonement, I am asking the Holy Spirit to remove from my mind the thought that is not in alignment with the truth.

The second thing that caught my attention was the sentence:

Having made this choice you will understand why you once believed that, when you met someone else, you thought he was someone else.

First Jesus very clearly states that we are not separate. The lady who took my breakfast order this morning is not someone else. She is part of my own Self. The body she is employing for this separation story is designed to keep the secret that she is me, but I am not fooled. At least, I am not fooled right now. We are not truly separate, just as we are not truly the body device we use in this story of separate beings having separate experiences.

I say that I am not fooled right now because I am sitting alone in my hotel room, listening to Spirit, feeling His closeness, remembering what I am. Then I leave the room and I meet many people coming and going during the day and I get caught up in the story, and I forget my unity with all that is.

But I never completely forget anymore. During the day I will suddenly remember, as I speak to a customer, that we are not separate. Or I will catch a glance of someone on the street and I will remember the truth for that instant. Or driving alone in my car I will know for that brief time that I am not really alone and never could be.

Oh, to know this as my experience all the time! To never forget! To never be confused again! This is why I study A Course in Miracles, why I commune with Spirit, why I am vigilant for every thought that would take me from my goal. I want to feel the perfect peace, the absolute joy of knowing what we are. I can peak behind the veil, and experience this joining at least to some extent, as I allow it to happen in each holy encounter. Today, I would enter fully into each holy encounter so that I can have the full experience of our oneness. I ask for help to remember my purpose.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: III.The Holy Encounter, Paragraph 5. 8-12-14

III. The Holy Encounter, P 5
5 The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is “Know thyself.” There is nothing else to seek. Everyone is looking for himself and for the power and glory he thinks he has lost. Whenever you are with anyone, you have another opportunity to find them. Your power and glory are in him because they are yours. The ego tries to find them in yourself alone, because it does not know where to look. The Holy Spirit teaches you that if you look only at yourself you cannot find yourself, because that is not what you are. Whenever you are with a brother, you are learning what you are because you are teaching what you are. He will respond either with pain or with joy, depending on which teacher you are following. He will be imprisoned or released according to your decision, and so will you. Never forget your responsibility to him, because it is your responsibility to yourself. Give him his place in the Kingdom and you will have yours.

Again my day will be filled with opportunities to remember what I am. Each brother I meet offers me that gift. I can ask the Holy Spirit who this brother is, or I can ask the ego. Yesterday, I can think of one specific time when I asked the ego. I caught myself and tried to back out of it, but I saw that I was really attached to the ego version of this brother of mine. I saw him as incompetent. I resented him for his incompetence. And I did not want to let go of that perception of him.

Because this is how I perceive him and because I believe my perception, everything he does seems to prove that I am right. I see his every action and word as if it were passing through a filter of incompetence. Here is an example of how that works. He was supposed to do something and then report on it. I saw that he did not provide a complete report and my mind saw incompetence. Later I discovered the reason the report was incomplete is that it was not physically possible for him to complete the project.

Seeing this error on my part, this judgment that was based on incomplete information, helped to snap me out of my wrong minded thinking. I stopped listening to the ego and began to listen instead to the Holy Spirit. The ego had been telling me that I can find my true self only in myself. In fact, it says, I can find my true self only as I compare myself to someone lesser. That man is incompetent compared to me, is what the ego says, so now I know what I am; I am competent. That is, I am competent until I see my own incompetence compared to someone more competent.

What I understand now is that I cannot see in myself what I am unwilling to see in the other person, because we are one. That we are separate is just an illusion. I look at my brother and I see incompetence and I have taught myself incompetence. I have claimed it for myself. I look to him to see what I am not, whether that is something better or worse, and I have taught myself that we are separate. How can I find myself if I am looking for proof I am a separate individual with no connection to others? That is not what I am.

I ask the Holy Spirit to show me my brother and I will see his beauty and glory and perfection, and I will teach myself that I am beautiful and glorious and perfect. When I ask the Holy Spirit to show me my brother, I am asking the Holy Spirit to show me myself and so to show me that we are one. Allowing my mind to be guided to the truth of my unity to all there is, is how I remember what I am.

I felt sad this morning when I read this paragraph and realized the missed opportunity yesterday. Even though I asked Holy Spirit to remove the disordered thoughts from my mind, I did not entirely want Him to, and so I kept going back to my judgment. This morning I want to be free of this untrue story of my brother. I want to look at him with the Holy Spirit and not the ego.

I want never to turn to the ego to teach me who this brother is. I have had this long-standing story of a brother who is different from me, who is guilty of incompetence. I don’t need this story anymore. I ask the Holy Spirit to remove from my mind the belief that I can find myself in myself alone. I ask that He remove from my mind the untrue thoughts about my brother so I can see the love and unity that is there. I also ask that the Holy Spirit remove from my mind the thought that I am guilty for my error yesterday.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: III.The Holy Encounter, Paragraph 4. 8-11-14

III. The Holy Encounter, P4
4 When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him you will see yourself. As you treat him you will treat yourself. As you think of him you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose yourself. Whenever two Sons of God meet, they are given another chance at salvation. Do not leave anyone without giving salvation to him and receiving it yourself. For I am always there with you, in remembrance of you.

This is one of my favorite paragraphs in the Course. When I read it, I feel like crying, it makes me so happy to know that salvation is only as far away as the next encounter with a brother. It makes me so grateful for my brothers and so happy to remember that we are not these separate individuals with each our own different goals, our own private thoughts and our own needs that are in opposition to each other. We are part of each other, and part of our Creator.

We each have a part in this play of life and so it seems that we are sometimes stranger and sometimes enemy, but in Real Life, we must laugh at such a ridiculous idea. Today, even from within the story, I will laugh at such folly. I ask the Holy Spirit to show me the Son of God in each encounter with a brother. I am willing to set aside what my character thinks of as her personal needs and personal goals and personal will, and see my brother for Who He is.

I will have to remember my desire and not get distracted by his play acting, because my brother is not in on the switch today so he will still be engrossed in his part. I know from long experience how easy it is to fall back into my own role as one thing or another triggers my character. I pray for help to remember the truth today, to peak from behind the veil and see the glorious, beautiful truth hidden behind the mask of separate individual characters.

Maybe Spirit will use this opportunity to bring into my sphere of influence some brother who is ready to be reminded of his true self, and our meeting, brief as it may be, will awaken an ancient memory of Unity. And maybe that memory will be with us from now on, to never be completely lost again.  Every encounter with a brother is a holy one, but today, Jesus, I will remember this, and I am appreciative that you are there with me, helping me.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: III.The Holy Encounter, Paragraph 3. 8-6-14

III. The Holy Encounter, P 3
3 The Will of the Father and of the Son are one, by their extension. Their extension is the result of Their oneness, holding Their unity together by extending Their joint Will. This is perfect creation by the perfectly created, in union with the Perfect Creator. The Father must give fatherhood to His Son, because His Own Fatherhood must be extended outward. You who belong in God have the holy function of extending His Fatherhood by placing no limits upon it. Let the Holy Spirit teach you how to do this, for you can know what it means only of God Himself.

The Course talks about the Father and son, and of the Will of the Father and the Son as being the same, and it speaks of a perfect creation of a Perfect Creator. I think of it this way. The Father creates through extending Himself, so the Son is an extension of the Father. The Son, in His turn, creates through extending Himself so that His creation is an extension of Himself and a further extension of God. It is Perfection creating more Perfection, which creates more Perfection, without end.

Now I see myself dreaming I am outside of this perfection. I see myself using my power of creation to make imperfect things rather than creating perfectly. I have placed limits on creation through my decision to experience something else. I have forgotten how to return to the flow of Perfection and even that I want to do so.

But Perfection does not leave a question unanswered, so the Holy Spirit was placed in my mind. Its function is to wait patiently for the son to ask for His Father, then It answers with Love and Peace and Comfort and guides us out of the wilderness of our imagination. As we answer our holy function, the perfection of Creation continues without interruption.

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