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Study of Text, Chapter 9, VII. The Two Evaluations, P 7. 4-2-15

VII. The Two Evaluations, P 7
7 I have said that the ego does not know what a real question is. Lack of knowledge of any kind is always associated with unwillingness to know, and this produces a total lack of knowledge simply because knowledge is total. Not to question your littleness therefore is to deny all knowledge, and keep the ego’s whole thought system intact. You cannot retain part of a thought system, because it can be questioned only at its foundation. And this must be questioned from beyond it, because within it its foundation does stand. The Holy Spirit judges against the reality of the ego’s thought system merely because He knows its foundation is not true. Therefore, nothing that arises from it means anything. He judges every belief you hold in terms of where it comes from. If it comes from God, He knows it to be true. If it does not, He knows that it is meaningless.

Journal
There are two things I want to take away from this paragraph. One is that to question any part of my current thought system is to question it all, and to keep any part of it is to keep it all. If I believe that the neighbor who turns out to be a pedophile is guilty, then I will never believe that I am innocent, even if I believe that every other being on earth is innocent.

If I believe that my neighbor who doesn’t cut his grass often enough is guilty then I will never know that I am innocent, even if I believe that everyone else is innocent. If I judge either of those two neighbors, and only those two and no one else, judgment is still part of my belief system and I will always judge myself and believe others are judging me.

Thought systems are not a buffet line. I don’t get to pick and choose, to believe in one moment and when inconvenient to believe, in the next moment, disbelieve. Belief systems are whole. To believe any part of it is to believe it all. I have moments when I wholly believe what Holy Spirit tells me about my true nature and in that moment I am in Heaven, both figuratively and actually. But in any one moment I cannot hold two different systems in my mind, and to be happy, I must stop jumping from one to the other.

The other thing I will take from this paragraph is the simplicity of Holy Spirit’s judgment. He has one criteria to judge my beliefs. If it comes from God it is true and if it comes from ego it is meaningless. Because it is simple and straight forward it is easy to understand and simple to live by. The ego mind would make it very complicated and impossible to understand as it argued for exceptions and justifications. The spiritual ego would throw out desperate excuses for the one it could not forgive instead of simply knowing that if it did not come from God it is not real and so there is nothing to forgive.

I cannot yet reliably know what is real and what is not within my thought system because I am still too identified with ego. But the Holy Spirit is the truth in my mind and He will choose for me if I ask Him to. That is His function and He never fails to respond when I ask. I only need to notice when I am unhappy and realize that is not God’s Will so I must be thinking something God would not think. Then I ask that my mind be healed. I ask that my thoughts be corrected and that I see differently. I ask for the Atonement.

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Study of Text, Chapter 9, VII. The Two Evaluations, P 6. 4-1-15

VII. The Two Evaluations, P 6
6 You cannot evaluate an insane belief system from within it. Its range precludes this. You can only go beyond it, look back from a point where sanity exists and see the contrast. Only by this contrast can insanity be judged as insane. With the grandeur of God in you, you have chosen to be little and to lament your littleness. Within the system that dictated this choice the lament is inevitable. Your littleness is taken for granted there and you do not ask, “Who granted it?” The question is meaningless within the ego’s thought system, because it would open the whole thought system to question.

Journal
I understand what Jesus is saying about not being able to evaluate an insane belief system from within it. My ex-husband, Charlie, who was schizophrenic would experience his illness in cycles. There were times when he was perfectly sane (or at least as sane as any of us) and then he would go into a cycle where his brain misfired and he thought everyone was out to get him. He would imagine things and believe them. He would hear voices that no one else heard and he thought they were real.

When he was in a good cycle he would be able to recognize that he had a mental illness and that his behavior had been erratic at best. He knew that he did not think straight when this happened. He even asked me to put him away someplace if that became necessary because he didn’t want to hurt anyone. But when he went into the cycle where he didn’t think straight, all that went out the door. He couldn’t, from within that insane thought system, realize that he was not thinking clearly. From within that strange thought system it seemed as if everyone else was insane.

I see that his condition is not uncommon, simply extreme. When I have become caught up in an ego storm of some sort, I became very confused. I forgot what it is like to be sane. In those times I thought that fear and guilt, anger and depression were not only normal, but absolutely justified. I thought that there was nothing else to feel.

This is not so extreme for me now, but that is because I have been out of the ego system enough that even when I get lost in ego, I can still remember enough to know what is happening. For this reason I can get out of it faster and not suffer so much while I am in it. I can even see that someday, maybe soon, I will no longer fall back into that thought system. Even now, I can laugh at it when I see what is happening, so perfect freedom can’t be too far off.

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