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Study of Text, Chapter10: III. The God of Sickness, P 4. 5-28-15

III. The God of Sickness, P 4
4 To believe a Son of God is sick is to worship the same idol he does. God created love, not idolatry. All forms of idolatry are caricatures of creation, taught by sick minds too divided to know that creation shares power and never usurps it. Sickness is idolatry, because it is the belief that power can be taken from you. Yet this is impossible, because you are part of God, Who is all power. A sick god must be an idol, made in the image of what its maker thinks he is. And that is exactly what the ego does perceive in a Son of God; a sick god, self-created, self-sufficient, very vicious and very vulnerable. Is this the idol you would worship? Is this the image you would be vigilant to save? Are you really afraid of losing this?

Journal
I have made a lot of progress toward accepting that the world is not real, that my life as I am experiencing it is not really my life, and that everything I see, everything I experience through my senses is an image I have made, including the body that experiences it.  I am spirit, awareness, mind, whatever name I choose to give it. I am part of God, in God, and that is as far as I can go with it without feeling a little anxious.

Yes, I say I am the Son of God and I know this must be true for any of the rest of it to be true.  But if I am in God, if He created me as an extension of Himself and like Him, then I am a God, too. Oh my, that is just too strange for me to say. I feel like I must say this, and yet I feel like apologizing for saying it. I don’t know if I am ready to step into that, yet.

God created me to be like Him and so I must be, but I just have trouble with completely embracing this thought. Well, of course I do. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be running around her pretending I am an aging body, moving relentlessly toward death. If I believed, no, let me rephrase that, if I knew what I was, I would know that all others are part of the same God Mind and I would treat them as if they are Divine as well.

Maybe that is why I choose sickness and other forms of suffering. Maybe I am too afraid to be what I am and so I deliberately choose to be small in every way I can. I have been stepping out of that self-created image I made of myself, and I am writing about this so maybe I am closer to accepting my own Divinity than I think. But writing this helps me to see how resistant I am still, and that I am afraid to re-claim my true Self. This helps me to understand why it is that I am constantly, moment by moment, sustaining this false image of self.

Jesus is helping me, in this paragraph, to see that what I am doing is a form of idolatry. I have chosen an image of a sick god to represent me. That has to be the most ridiculous and clearly insane choice of all. And yet, here I am, worshiping this frail, weak, and very vulnerable image of my self, and sickness, in all its forms, is a most effective defense against what God made me to be. As Jesus intimates… really? That’s what I want to protect?

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Study of Text, Chapter10: III. The God of Sickness, P 3. 5-27-15

III. The God of Sickness, P 3
3 To believe that a Son of God can be sick is to believe that part of God can suffer. Love cannot suffer, because it cannot attack. The remembrance of love therefore brings invulnerability with it. Do not side with sickness in the presence of a Son of God even if he believes in it, for your acceptance of God in him acknowledges the Love of God he has forgotten. Your recognition of him as part of God reminds him of the truth about himself, which he is denying. Would you strengthen his denial of God and thus lose sight of yourself? Or would you remind him of his wholeness and remember your Creator with him?

Journal
When Jesus talks about sickness he means that the mind is confused to the point that we do not know who we are. This is reflected in our lives as stories of suffering. We experience ourselves in lack, we suffer loss, our bodies become ill or injured, our relationships cause us pain. It doesn’t matter what form suffering takes, the cause is the same. We have chosen to see ourselves as if we could be outside Love.

In this paragraph Jesus is explaining to us that the remembrance of love will bring invulnerability with it. As I remember who I am, I suffer less. I have less sickness and my relationships are more loving and less conflicted. I am at peace far more than I am in fear. He also is reminding us that it is our function to remember the truth for everyone. I do this very well most of the time. A confused brother is in my presence and I see through his confusion to the truth about him. I know he is not his suffering. I know that he is the love in which he was created.

But I don’t see clearly all the time. Sometimes I am triggered by someone else’s confusion. This happens when I am confused about the same thing, and actually, when this happens it can be helpful to me. Sometimes I am surprised by my reaction because I didn’t realize that this was a problem for me. In that moment I can ask for healing of my mind, which is also healing of my brother’s mind.

It can be difficult for me when the one suffering is very close to me, such as when it is one of my children. I might find myself suffering with him or her. I used to think this was love, but now I understand that it is not loving to strengthen someone’s denial of God. It certainly doesn’t help either one of us. Again, I have another option. I can use this moment to ask for healing. Jesus tells us that it does not matter where in the Sonship healing occurs, because we share one mind. As I am healed so is everyone else, including my sick child.

How do I remind someone of his wholeness? Sometimes, if it is appropriate, I use words. At other times words would not be helpful. I can simply listen without judgment, waiting for the Holy Spirit to guide me to do what is needed. Regardless of what is said or not said, love is the intention, and so sometimes all I need to do for someone is love them. And always, whether this is expressed out loud or not, I know for them who they are.

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Study of Text, Chapter10: III. The God of Sickness, P 2. 5-26-15

Chapter 10: III. The God of Sickness, P 2
What Comforter can there be for the sick children of God except His power through you? Remember that it does not matter where in the Sonship He is accepted. He is always accepted for all, and when your mind receives Him the remembrance of Him awakens throughout the Sonship. Heal your brothers simply by accepting God for them. Your minds are not separate, and God has only one channel for healing because He has but one Son. God’s remaining Communication Link with all His children joins them together, and them to Him. To be aware of this is to heal them because it is the awareness that no one is separate, and so no one is sick.

Journal
Oh, dear Jesus, brother of mine, please help me to understand and fully accept what you are saying here. I am to awaken the Sonship. This is my purpose. I understand that it is everyone’s purpose because we are all one. But from where I see myself, it is my purpose. This is not hard to do and not more than I can do. It is simple, really.

I have already accepted as deeply as I can right now that I am God’s child, and that I share His Will. I live this as much as I am able. While I live this, I have no trouble knowing my brother is also part of this Sonship. No matter what seems to be happening in their lives, no matter how confused they might be in any moment, in my right mind I know who they are.  What I know they know, because we share the same mind.

I ran into someone from the office yesterday while shopping. There used to be animosity between us. Recently there has been a lot of conflict and she is in the center of it.  But when I saw her, I felt only loving affection for her. No matter what she does, no matter how she feels about me, I know who she is.  The ego mind keeps warning me that she is not trustworthy and brings up past behavior. That in no way changes who she is and I am so happy that I can be the channel for God’s healing power.

And if I forget, if I get caught in the ego web of deception and fail to be that channel, I will change my mind. I will change from using the ego mind to judge the situation and her part in it, to using the God Mind to see that there is only God and His Son is in that Mind. No one is separate from God and in God there is only Innocence. This is the way I save the world. I feel overcome with gratitude that this is so. I begin to understand what Jesus has told us, that every encounter is a holy encounter.

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Study of Text, Chapter10: III. The God of Sickness, P 1. 5-22-15

III. The God of Sickness
1 You have not attacked God and you do love Him. Can you change your reality? No one can will to destroy himself. When you think you are attacking yourself, it is a sure sign that you hate what you think you are. And this, and only this, can be attacked by you. What you think you are can be very hateful, and what this strange image makes you do can be very destructive. Yet the destruction is no more real than the image, although those who make idols do worship them. The idols are nothing, but their worshippers are the Sons of God in sickness. God would have them released from their sickness and returned to His Mind. He will not limit your power to help them, because He has given it to you. Do not be afraid of it, because it is your salvation.

Journal
What a relief to read the first sentence. I have not attacked God and I do love Him. The belief that this is not true is the reason I am still dreaming, and since it is time I woke up, I am glad to know that I am innocent, that I do want to return to my Father, and that it is safe to do so.

The next reassurance I get from this paragraph is that I am not really attacking myself even though it seems like I am. I am actually only attacking what I believe about my self, what I think I am. This body and this personality that I call Myron and think of as my self is not really who I am. Jesus says that this strange image I have made of myself can feel very hateful and destructive. Yet the destruction is no more real than the image I have made and called my self.

As I read these paragraphs I feel guilt fall away. I am remembering a sentence in the Course where Jesus reassures us that the ego does sin, but we are not the ego. He is giving this same reassurance now.  All those times when I acted selfishly and all the times when I failed to be the person I wanted to be, are not of consequence. They are important only as they allow me to see what belief in my mind needs to be released to the Holy Spirit.

Here is something interesting. Jesus refers to the images we made as idols and says that when we make idols we worship them. So this little self I made, the body and its personality and the whole story I made around it, is my idol. I am attached to it because I made it and I worship it. That sounds very strange.  Thinking about it, though, I suppose I do.

I’m thinking about how I spend money on this body to decorate it, to make it attractive to other bodies. I spend time, money and energy to make it stronger and healthier. I take it to the doctor every year to forestall any possible problems. I defend it from other people, from outside influences of every kind. I worry about it and care for it like it was something precious and of the utmost value. I treasure it above all other bodies. It is my special idol.

Jesus says this is sick behavior and that God would have me released from this sickness and returned to His Mind. Is this a sickness, this worshipping of the body? We think of it as normal and even commendable to take care of the body, though we see it as sickness if taken too far. But when I think about what the body really is, that it is just an image that I made and projected outward so I could pretend to be separate from God and separate from my holy Self, then I understand what Jesus means.

It is a sickness to worship something that doesn’t actually exist, that isn’t real. Even in the world and in time, it is a fleeting image, a frail and pathetic thing that begins the process of dying the moment we bring it into existence. It is not what we are and what we are is not in the least affected by what happens to this image we made. Is it something to be worshipped, this imaginary thing? Is it something so important that we would trade it for eternal bliss?

God would have us be freed from this strange idolatry and returned to His Mind Which is our true Home. He has given us the power to do this, to return the Son of God to His Father. We are told that we should not be afraid of this power. I had an experience as I was reading something in the Course that put me, just briefly, into that flow of power. It scared me. I felt myself contract away from it. I realized I was afraid of that responsibility.

I was surprised by my reaction, but it is evidently common and expected, so much so, that Jesus is addressing it here. I suppose that our misuse of that power and the unexpected and unfortunate results have left us power shy. But God gave us the power to save ourselves and so it is ours to use. God would no more give us something harmful than you would give your child sharp objects to play with. I am ready to embrace this power and I open my heart to healing. I release the fear I felt at the thought of doing so. I release it to the Holy Spirit to be removed from my mind.

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Study of Text, Chapter 10, II. The Decision to Forget, P 6. 5-21-15

II. The Decision to Forget, P 6
6 If you realized the complete havoc this makes of your peace of mind you could not make such an insane decision. You make it only because you still believe it can get you something you want. It follows, then, that you want something other than peace of mind, but you have not considered what it must be. Yet the logical outcome of your decision is perfectly clear, if you will only look at it. By deciding against your reality, you have made yourself vigilant against God and His Kingdom. And it is this vigilance that makes you afraid to remember Him.

Journal
I have created a closed cycle that keeps me in the illusion. I made a decision to experience myself as separate from God and His Kingdom and to keep this impossibility believable I must be vigilant against truth. I must dedicate myself to keeping reality from my awareness. How very hard that must be! As it turns out, the necessity of guarding against God is what causes fear of God.

I imagine it this way. I wanted to experience something entirely impossible and so I walled off a part of the mind. I made a room with a door that I could close. Now I have a place where reality cannot intrude and I am able to have the experience I want as long as I am careful to keep that door closed and to guard against reality coming into my imaginary room, which will happen the moment I stop guarding against it.

And thus the endless cycle. I must of necessity, keep reality at bay, or I cannot have this experience. This requires that I be vigilant against God and this very act of vigilance against God makes me afraid of God. See how perfectly I set this up? See how the use of guilt and fear keep the illusion in place?

How to get free of this closed cycle is the question. This was planned for, too. We might be curious creators playing in the field of infinite possibilities, but we are not powerful enough to actually undo Reality, nor would we want to. No, we have an exit strategy. We have the Truth in our mind waiting for us to call upon it. We also have the plan to help us remember our desire to awaken and to gently guide us through the process. For us, this plan is laid out in A Course in Miracles.

I love how my study of the Text often coincides with my study of the Lessons. This morning in the Lessons Jesus was talking to us about how our mind holds only what we think with God. Before I wrote in my journal about this, I asked him to help me understand what he was saying. This is what I got. Notice how perfectly it fits in with this paragraph in the Course.

From Introduction to Review IV.

Jesus says that this review is preparing us for the second part of learning how the truth can be applied. It is getting us ready for what comes next. I like the sound of that. It feels like graduating to the next level in school, this anticipation of what comes next. Because everything so far has turned my thought system completely upside down, it at first seemed hard.

But really, all I am learning is that I am not the body and personality that I thought I was. This is not my life. And these are not even my thoughts that I seem to think all day long. What Jesus wants me to focus on now is that none of this could be true because my mind holds only what I think with God. So if I seem to be thinking something that is clearly not what I would think with God, then I must not be thinking at all.

It doesn’t seem reasonable at first because I have given so much weight to this mind chatter, and I have told myself that the ego mind I made up is just as real as the mind I share with God. But in reality, the ego mind that is filled with false thoughts is not real. It is just a construct made for the purpose of experiencing something that is not possible.

My real mind holds only what I think with God. Clearly, this is my salvation. Yes, I have a made up mind, a construct to allow the separation idea to play out, but I also have the mind I share with God, which is my true mind. They are both within me and that means I can become aware of my true mind any time I want to.

What is it that is blocking my awareness? Guilt, fear and all its variants are what stands between me and the state of Heaven, of knowing the Mind of God. How do I remove those blocks? I remove them by understanding that they are not real and so it is possible to be free of them, and by wanting to be free. Then the Holy Spirit removes them for me. It is simple and straight forward, however difficult it might seem.

Guilt feeds on itself and creates fear which can paralyze. The ego mind makes it seem so terribly hard, so complicated. And yet, I don’t have to do anything to return to my God. I don’t have to learn to think differently. I don’t have to get rid of the ego thoughts.  I only have to desire to remember, because in actuality, my mind holds only what I think with God.

The return is not about doing anything to be what I am. It is simply a matter of turning away from the belief that the dream is real, and that I want to keep dreaming it. In that moment, reality comes rushing in and I am that I am. I look forward to this review, to sitting in quiet and allowing the Word of God to do its healing work in my mind.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 10, II. The Decision to Forget, P 1. 5-13-15

II. The Decision to Forget, P 5
5 All attack is Self attack. It cannot be anything else. Arising from your own decision not to be what you are, it is an attack on your identification. Attack is thus the way in which your identification is lost, because when you attack, you must have forgotten what you are. And if your reality is God’s, when you attack you are not remembering Him. This is not because He is gone, but because you are actively choosing not to remember Him.

Journal
I have understood and accepted that when I attack someone, anyone, I am attacking myself. I know this is true because I feel the loss of peace and I experience fear, because when I attack I am teaching myself that I can be attacked. But what Jesus is saying here is a little different. He is saying that when I attack I attack my Self. All attack teaches me that I am something I am not. It obscures my reality because I am doing something that is completely outside my reality.

Further, he says that this is a deliberate choice. I lose all sense of my identity when I attack and I do this because I want to forget who I am, so I can be something else. I accept this as well. I do understand now that I am not this body/personality that I have so closely identified with. I understand that I wanted to have this experience and so I did. I choose to forget this and then I choose to remember it. Back and forth, now, as I begin to awaken.

Ultimately, Jesus is explaining that the real loss for us is that in choosing to forget our true identity we are choosing to forget God. We are, in reality, an extension of God. Our reality is the same as God’s and so to have a different experience, to know ourselves as less than divine, we must forget not only our identity, but we must forget God’s as well.

It is a little scary to realize that I deliberately chose to forget God, and that every moment I choose to see myself as a body, as separate, I am doing it again. As Jesus has told us before, we did not destroy God or lose God, we just chose to not be aware of God, so we are not guilty. But when we deliberately forget God, we become afraid of God, not because he is scary, but because we forgot Him.

The ego mind argues that I didn’t forget God, that I think of God a lot and pray to Him. But I don’t remember God. I don’t remember His nature. I don’t remember what it feels like to be part of Him, and so I don’t remember my own nature or what it feels like to be my Self. I am beginning to long for that memory to return to me. That has to be a good thing.

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Study of Text, Chapter10: II. The Decision to Forget, P 4. 5-19-15

II. The Decision to Forget, 4
4 When you attack, you are denying yourself. You are specifically teaching yourself that you are not what you are. Your denial of reality precludes the acceptance of God’s gift, because you have accepted something else in its place. If you understand that this is always an attack on truth, and truth is God, you will realize why it is always fearful. If you further recognize that you are part of God, you will understand why it is that you always attack yourself first.

Journal
If I attack someone it is because I feel threatened. As I am in truth, I cannot be threatened. I am Spirit, the Son of God, invulnerable and perfectly safe. No harm has ever come to me and cannot ever come to me. But when I forget what I am and start thinking with the ego mind, I feel vulnerable, weak and frail, because I am identified first and foremost with the body. I feel threated by everything, because the body seems open to attack by everything.

When I feel threatened, I want to defend myself and so I attack. The two, attack and defense, are always seen together. Even if I feel attacked and don’t say or do anything, the thought of attack, the belief in attack, is in my mind, and that thought keeps me in a dark place. It creates guilt in my mind and with guilt comes fear. This is not what I am and as long as I believe it is, I will block the truth and deny myself the gifts of God.

Yesterday I worked at the office and there was some strife between employees. I was not involved in it, but I could not avoid hearing the attacks and counter attacks. I saw this dynamic that I am learning about today being played out.  I noticed that after awhile I was feeling stressed. I began to resent this intrusion on my peace, and that resentment is an attack.

I saw what I was doing right away. I saw that I was making them guilty for how I felt. I am very familiar with this ego tactic and so I asked that my mind be healed. I asked for peace and to have peace I must be willing to let go of what it is that is blocking the peace. It was kind of funny the way Holy Spirit helped me.

I received a phone call from a student who started the conversation by saying what she really wanted was peace. We had a long conversation about how to do this. We also talked about the necessity of letting go of the blocks to peace, if peace is what we really want. It is not possible to have both peace and that which blocks peace.

We talked about how asking for peace but keeping the blocks in place isn’t going to work.  We discussed processes that would help in changing her mind, so that she could let go of the need for people in her life to be what she thought she needed them to be. We ended the conversation with a reminder that reading and talking about these truths will inspire us but will not heal us. For that we have to use what we receive from the words.

After we had hung up I was going over the conversation in my mind. It felt pretty complete and I thought it would be helpful. Then I had to laugh because I saw that the words I said to her were my answer from Holy Spirit. My peace cannot be taken from me by anyone else. If I am feeling stressed by someone else’s situation, that is something that happened in my mind and it is my mind that must be healed.

The thought that my peace depends on my environment being peaceful is wrong. Peace would not be worth much if it were so fragile, and dependent on others. I had thought that my coworkers were attacking my peace, but that thought was an attack on them because it said they were guilty.

It was also an attack on myself because it said that I was threatened and vulnerable to that threat. Feeling threatened and vulnerable attacked my reality. It left me believing that I am not my holy Self, but rather the frightened and guilty body the ego believes in. I saw that no one was threatening my peace. I was threatening myself, and I easily returned to peace with that realization.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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