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Study of the Text, Chapter 9, I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 11. 12-16-14

I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 11
11 You do not recognize the enormous waste of energy you expend in denying truth. What would you say of someone who persists in attempting the impossible, believing that to achieve it is to succeed? The belief that you must have the impossible in order to be happy is totally at variance with the principle of creation. God could not will that happiness depended on what you could never have. The fact that God is Love does not require belief, but it does require acceptance. It is indeed possible for you to deny facts, although it is impossible for you to change them. If you hold your hands over your eyes, you will not see because you are interfering with the laws of seeing. If you deny love, you will not know it because your cooperation is the law of its being. You cannot change laws you did not make, and the laws of happiness were created for you, not by you.

How is it that I deny the truth and insist that I can be happy only if the truth is not true? I do this when I desire sickness, when I desire to be unfairly treated, when I desire to be right at the expense of another. Why would I desire these things when they are so clearly the cause of my unhappiness? And yet I must desire them because they show up as my life.

I was angry with someone recently and I spent two days arguing for my anger, insisting that he be wrong and that his actions were hurting me. In my mind I was insisting that the only way I could be happy is if he sacrificed his perceived needs on my behalf. It took nearly two days for me to get past this idea, to move my hands from in front of my eyes so that I could see. What a waste of energy that was.

How could my happiness depend on what another person does or does not do? How could my happiness depend on getting my way at the expense of another? How could my happiness depend on what happens in a dream? Would God put my happiness out of my reach? Would he make happiness something elusive, something that is only sometimes possible?

Here is what I discovered when I finally remembered that I wanted to see. I decided that all of my previous goals that involved a need to have something happen were unimportant compared with the goal of knowing God. I let it all go to the Holy Spirit for purification. I let Him heal my mind. I stopped interfering with love and accepted it. Happiness happened.

The situation itself remains unresolved at the moment. The ego mind wants to revive the issue and it brings love into question at times, but I am not interested. I am aware of those thoughts and when one snags my attention I ask that the Holy Spirit remove it from my mind. There is a song I listen to every night as I go to sleep.

It repeats over and over the words, “thank you,” and, “your love is pouring down.” As the song repeats these words, I imagine that His love is pouring down on me, washing away the doubts and uncertainties that may have plagued me during the day, healing all that is not truth in my mind. I am filled with gratitude.

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Study of Text, Chapter 9, I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 10. 12-12-14

I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 10
10 When you ask the Holy Spirit for what would hurt you He cannot answer because nothing can hurt you, and so you are asking for nothing. Any wish that stems from the ego is a wish for nothing, and to ask for it is not a request. It is merely a denial in the form of a request. The Holy Spirit is not concerned with form, being aware only of meaning. The ego cannot ask the Holy Spirit for anything, because there is complete communication failure between them. Yet you can ask for everything of the Holy Spirit, because your requests to Him are real, being of your right mind. Would the Holy Spirit deny the Will of God? And could He fail to recognize it in His Son?

When I ask for anything that would support the ego thought system and thus maintain the dream state, I am asking for something that would hurt me and since I cannot be hurt I am asking for nothing. This would not be a true question, and it would not even be a question from me, but from the ego.

Here is an example of how I saw this work a couple of days ago. I had a very chaotic day at work. Nothing went right. I had to wait for customers at each stop and this put me behind on my schedule at a time when I could not afford to be behind. A lot of things went wrong, little mix ups, miscommunications, and the lot. By the end of the day I realized that my chaotic thinking had made a chaotic day and so I asked for clarity.

I used Lesson 325, the keynote, to salvation to help me see what happened. This lesson tells us how we make the day we experience. We have a desire and from that desire we make an image of what the desire would look like. Then we project that desire and look on it as if it was real and we defend it. So I asked the Holy Spirit to show me the desire that sourced this chaotic day,

It all began because I was disgruntled with work, with the company I work for and with my boss. I felt underappreciated and unfairly treated. This feeling was my request. Holding this belief in my mind and believing it is what started the whole thing. My desire, based on this belief was to be unfairly treated, and to see myself in a job that made me miserable.

From this desire I made an image of how this could be true. This image could have appeared in many ways but the image I made for that day was to have a chaotic day of late meetings and everything going wrong. I got a clue during the day when after one particularly difficult experience I had the thought that this was just not fair. I have noticed since I started using Lesson 325 as a practice that I have a lot of experiences stemming from the request to be unfairly treated, and to be a victim. So I knew, in a general way what was going on, but it took me awhile to let go of my victim stance and ask for clarity.

This desire to see what it feels like to be unfairly treated and to be a victim is not a real question because it hurts me. It is an effort to make the world real. The ego answers it readily because making the world appear real is its goal. That is why it took me a whole day to get clear on it. All the circumstances I had projected outward confused me temporarily and I believed in them and defended them.

I had thoughts like, “This is so unfair,” and “I wish I could retire and not have to do this job anymore.” Those thoughts were in defense of the idea that my experience is reality, I really am a victim, and the answer is to change the world. I had a desire, I made an image of that desire, I projected the image and then I believed in it and defended it.

But I also have true thoughts in my mind and even while all this was happening, I was aware of those thoughts as well. It felt frustrating because I was asking for conflicting solutions. I was asking the ego to fix this problem and I was asking the Holy Spirit to heal my mind. Conflict is suffering, and boy, was I suffering! It wasn’t until I was clear about what I really wanted that I got relief.

When I finally set aside the desire to be unfairly treated and made a different choice, that is that my mind be healed, the Holy Spirit answered my request swiftly and completely. When I asked for my mind to be healed, I was asking a real question, one that leads me to an awareness of love’s presence. This is a question from my right mind and the answer is the Will of God so it cannot fail to be answered.

It became clear to me that my job is not my problem and retirement or another job is not the answer. There is only one problem and one solution and the circumstances in my life represent either the problem or the solution, depending on what I want. The problem did not begin in the world and the solution is not there. It began in my mind with a desire to be unlike God, and the solution is in my mind as well. It is the Holy Spirit, and the remembrance of what I am.

I notice that the ego really wants me to hold onto the idea that this situation is real and that the answer lies in changing the world, and if I hope to be happy I better do that. But I am placing my trust in God. Today, I ask only that I experience peace and joy. That is my desire and it is the Will of God so I will expect a sure and ready answer.

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Study of Text, Chapter 9, I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 9. 12-11-14

I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 9

9 Ultimately everyone must remember the Will of God, because ultimately everyone must recognize himself. This recognition is the recognition that his will and God’s are one. In the presence of truth, there are no unbelievers and no sacrifices. In the security of reality, fear is totally meaningless. To deny what is can only seem to be fearful. Fear cannot be real without a cause, and God is the only Cause. God is Love and you do want Him. This is your will. Ask for this and you will be answered, because you will be asking only for what belongs to you.

The title of this section is, The Acceptance of Reality, and the reality is that God’s Will and my will are the same. With this recognition, which must come for us all, the ego is undone and we will remember what we are. While we all fear this shift from the illusion to truth, until me don’t, the fear is unwarranted. “Fear cannot be real without a cause, and God is the only Cause.” There is no fear in reality.

In reality, we want love and God is Love. This is our will. This is the will we are learning to remember and to embrace. It is already ours and so this is a simple process of releasing the false will and accepting what we really want. Today I am going to add to my usual practices. I am going to add this mantra.

“God is Love and I want Him. This is my will.”

This prayer will be answered because I am asking for what belongs to me.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 9, I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 8. 12-10-14

I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 8
8 No right mind can believe that its will is stronger than God’s. If, then, a mind believes that its will is different from His, it can only decide either that there is no God or that God’s Will is fearful. The former accounts for the atheist and the latter for the martyr, who believes that God demands sacrifices. Either of these insane decisions will induce panic, because the atheist believes he is alone, and the martyr believes that God is crucifying him. Yet no one really wants either abandonment or retaliation, even though many may seek both. Can you ask the Holy Spirit for “gifts” such as these, and actually expect to receive them? He cannot give you something you do not want. When you ask the Universal Giver for what you do not want, you are asking for what cannot be given because it was never created. It was never created, because it was never your will for you.

There are so many ways I ask for what I don’t want. I ask for what the ego wants, but I am not the ego. The ego always thinks the solution is in the story, in the world of time and space. It prays for more money, a better relationship, a healthier body. If I think I am an ego, if I am highly identified with the ego mind, I believe these things will give me what I want.

As my mind has healed and I have begun to identify more closely with the self that God created, I realize that these are simply symbols of what it is I truly want. I want to be happy and peaceful. The ego mind thinks that having these things will give me peace and joy. But, while I may achieve a different relationship, a healthier body or more money, it is all temporary and the satisfaction is temporary. When I ask for what is not real, I ask it of the giver of the unreal. All the ego has to offer are shifting forms.

What I have learned is that I really want peace that never ends, and joy that is unaffected by anything. I want to remember what I am and I want to return to full and open communication with God. This is true prayer and it has been answered. I am accepting that answer as quickly and fully as I am able. Within that answer all things needed are provided. If what I have asked for (and if it is in my life, I asked for it) does not bring me full joy, then it is not the will of God and so it is not my will. It is the ego separate will and I know that I can and want to choose again, this time asking from my true will.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 9, I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 7. 12-9-14

I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 7
7 You may insist that the Holy Spirit does not answer you, but it might be wiser to consider the kind of questioner you are. You do not ask only for what you want. This is because you are afraid you might receive it, and you would. That is why you persist in asking the teacher who could not possibly give you what you want. Of him you can never learn what it is, and this gives you the illusion of safety. Yet you cannot be safe from truth, but only in truth. Reality is the only safety. Your will is your salvation because it is the same as God’s. The separation is nothing more than the belief that it is different.

Two ideas came to my attention as I read this paragraph. First that I might believe that the Holy Spirit does not answer me, and second that the separation is the belief that my will is different than God’s Will. Looking at the first idea, that Holy Spirit sometimes does not answer, I remember that I used to be tortured by that belief. I would ask and ask and it would seem that I would ask in vain and this would frighten me.

If I ask for help from the Holy Spirit and I don’t receive it that would mean that I am wrong about everything. It would mean the Course is not true and I have put all my apples in that particular basket, so that would be very frightening, indeed. Eventually, I came to the same conclusion as is said here in this paragraph. It is never the Holy Spirit that fails to answer; it is my self that fails to question correctly.

Here is an example. If I feel anxious about not having enough time to get my spiritual work done before I have to go to work, I know that I have a belief in lack and in time as an absolute, so I ask that my mind be healed of that belief. That sounds like a perfect question of the Holy Spirit, and I should feel relief after asking and receiving. However, I have noticed that sometimes I ask for help with this problem and nothing changes. I remain anxious.

What has happened is that receiving an answer to this problem with time would mean turning my world upside. If time is not real and can be as elastic as I want because it is not real, then nothing is certain anymore. We may as well throw gravity out the window, too. My fear of change of this magnitude is greater than the fear I will have to choose between my spiritual commitment and my job.

Lack is such a cornerstone of my belief system that I cannot really imagine life without it.  In other words, I ask for the belief in lack to be gone, but I don’t really believe it can happen. I am reminded of the scene in Star Wars where Luke was attempting to levitate his space ship out of a bog. He said to Yoda, “All right, I’ll give it a try.” And Yoda said, “No. Try not. Do… or do not. There is no try.” When Luke failed and Yoda did it easily, he said, “I don’t believe it.” And Yoda said, “That is why you fail.” I am like Luke. I know it can be done, but I just can’t believe I can do it.

In both cases the Holy Spirit is not failing in His answer to me, I am failing in my questioning. I am afraid to ask of the One Who would answer me surely, and so I am asking the ego mind. The ego mind tells me what it believes. Time is real and lack is a certainty. And so I am able to continue believing in my story of separation, pretending to myself that I tried. I know what Yoda would say about that! ~smile~

The way I have dealt with this is to chip away at the belief one circumstance at a time. I need time to finish writing my commentary, and I remember that Jesus said he would arrange time for me if I would let him and so I do. I finish the work, get it posted and still meet my customer on time, and I am amazed that I did all of that in less time than it was possible.

I am like Luke watching Yoda do the seemingly impossible. But each time it happens I lose some of the certainty about time being real, and a lot of the fear that maybe Jesus is right and time is something I made up. Now that this has happened over and over, the surprise is that I still believe in time. I still get anxious about it. Jeez, what is it going to take? The same thing happens with lack. I work with the circumstances one at a time until I have built my willingness to allow total healing.

And the second issue, that separation is no more than the belief that my will is different than God’s Will, rings so true for me now. I know it did not always feel right, and in fact, for awhile it felt threatening in a way I was unwilling to examine too closely. I just didn’t want to give up my separate will and so I couldn’t accept I shared God’s Will.

That is slowly reversing itself, though. I still have resistance but it is lessening by the day. I now have full willingness to face the old beliefs wherever they surface and to allow my mind to be healed. As this belief is undone the entire ego thought system is undone.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 9, I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 6. 12-8-14

I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 6
6 It is impossible to communicate in alien tongues. You and your Creator can communicate through creation, because that, and only that is Your joint Will. A divided mind cannot communicate, because it speaks for different things to the same mind. This loses the ability to communicate simply because confused communication does not mean anything. A message cannot be communicated unless it makes sense. How sensible can your messages be, when you ask for what you do not want? Yet as long as you are afraid of your will, that is precisely what you are asking for.

My Creator doesn’t speak English. He doesn’t speak words at all. We cannot communicate in that way. We communicate through creation only. I have to admit that I don’t know how I do this, but I know that I must, because in another place in the Course it says that we communicate directly with God. It must be heart to Heart. My truest desires and my truest love is received by God without the interference of inadequate words and concepts, and without the confusion I suffer when I try to communicate through my ego mind.

Do I ask for what I do not want? All the time. I have become more aware of this conflicted asking since I began practicing Lesson 325. It says that everything I see is a reflection of a process in my mind that begins with a desire, becomes an image in my mind, and is then projected outward where I can look at it, believe it and defend it.

So as I notice situations in my life that are upsetting in some way, I ask myself what it was that I desired. What I am discovering is that I desired something, made an image of it, and in my experience of that image I often suffer. For instance, I had some physical discomfort this weekend. I asked the Holy Spirit to show me the desire that caused this image to be made and I saw that I wanted to suffer physical pain.

All this healing of the mind is challenging the ego and physical pain has been effective in the past as a deterrent to the idea I am not a body. It is also a major distraction and keeps the mind focused on the story rather than the cause of the story. So I can see why I desired pain. There can be other reasons, too, but the issue right now is that I desire pain, and then when I get the pain, I don’t want it.

Like Jesus said, I ask for what I don’t want. I don’t want the pain I asked for because then I have an unpleasant experience, but mainly because it teaches me that I am something I am not. What I truly want is to remember what I am, and I am certainly not the frail sickly body I asked for. Noticing this process, becoming aware of and accepting that I did indeed choose to experience pain, is helping me to accept full responsibility for the world I made, and it is helping me to allow the mind to be healed.

I could have taken medicine this weekend, but fixing the image I made isn’t really fixing the problem. Neither is it helpful to try to think differently. The one who thinks she is a body in a real world is the one who wants the pain to go away by thinking different thoughts. She is an image I have made as well. What I did instead is to realize that the desire to be in pain is the point of healing and to ask the Holy Spirit to remove that from the mind, now, and forever.

These insane thoughts are making an insane world, and the way to correct this is to allow the Holy Spirit to heal the mind. When there are no more insane thoughts in the mind, all desire will come from the Love that we are and the images we make will be the real world, or the happy world that Jesus talks about. From that place, we will be lifted up by our Creator, and all else will disappear.

This weekend it looked like I just wanted to be pain free, but what I really wanted was a healed mind. I wasn’t just asking to feel better; I was asking to return the mind to its natural state, to be free of all conflict and to return my awareness to true creation, and to full communication with my Creator. 

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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A Reflection of Ideas. Part 2

A Reflection of Ideas. Part 2

This is salvation’s keynote: What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want. From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as one’s own. From insane wishes comes an insane world. From judgment comes a world condemned. And from forgiving thoughts a gentle world comes forth, with mercy for the holy Son of God, to offer him a kindly home where he can rest a while before he journeys on, and help his brothers walk ahead with him, and find the way to Heaven and to God. Lesson 325

First I understand how I make the world I see.

It is a reflection of a process in my mind.
It starts with a desire.
I make an image of that desire. I judge it valuable. I seek to find it.
I project it outward. I look upon it. I decide it is real and I guard it as my own.

I also see that, just as these insane thoughts make an insane world, forgiveness makes a gentle world. I can change the world I see when I change my thoughts. So I am continually creating the world I see.

Knowing this, I started using these ideas. The first thing I did was to begin looking at things differently. I would look at a lamp and the thought in my mind was that this thing is a lamp. I would change that to, “This is an image I have made that I call lamp.” I did this often during the day to help me shift my thinking about the things I see.

The next thing I did was to change the way I see circumstances in my life. The old way of viewing these circumstances went like this. I would have a headache and the ego mind would think of why my head hurts. I would think about the weather, what stress I am under, or if I had enough sleep. I would nervously wonder if this was the beginning of a migraine, and start thinking of possible triggers.

Now, when I noticed something like this, I would stop the process and shift my perspective. I would remember that this headache is an image I have made. It is not real and it did not begin in the world, but began in my mind, and remains in my mind with the rest of the world I have made. I would then ask to see the original desire that sourced the image of Myron with a headache. It is this desire that will point me to the belief that needs to be healed.

I saw the desire to prove the body is real. That desire was coupled with the desire to prove the body is stronger than the mind through making an image of Myron helpless against a migraine. I saw that sometimes the desire was to ground Myron in the illusion by making an image of her running around looking endlessly for solutions to the migraine problem. This, of course, led me to a deeper desire, which was to keep the illusion in place and the ego self strong in the mind.

In order for all of this to be effective as a believable story that keeps the mind engaged so as not to remember it is only a story, it must be consistent. It doesn’t have to make perfect sense, but it must be logical and coherent. So each time I make an image of a headache, I make that image something believable and something that makes sense to the story.

I make certain triggers, like not enough sleep makes the head hurt. I do this often, and soon, the idea that not enough sleep causes a headache is so fixed in the mind that it seems like an undeniable fact. Now it is harder than ever to refute. That I found a trigger for the headache reinforces that the headache is real and is something separate from my will, and that I must battle it with all my resources.

When, after every effort on my part, I still get headaches, I have proven to myself that I am victim to the body. I have convinced myself that I get headaches and there is nothing I can do about it. I am a frail and weak body and each headache brings to doubt the words I read in the Course that tell me I am God’s Holy Son.

But now that I understand the process, now that I understand why it is that this world I see represents my every wish, I am not fooled by my images. I ask to be shown the original desire, and the belief that desire represents. I have seen how this desire is keeping me in the dream, and is hurting me. I ask that my mind be healed.

Seeing it all so clearly has helped me to truly desire something else. Now that I see what I don’t want, I am asking the Holy Spirit to remove from my mind those beliefs and the desires that source the images I make. And I am learning to make images from the desire to awaken. I will share some other examples later, because I notice that in true ego fashion the mind wants to separate out and make this true for some things, but confuse other things and make it seem like there are exceptions. There aren’t.

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