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Study of Text, Chapter 11: I: The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 8. 8-17-15

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 8

8 Yet what you will you do not know. This is not strange when you realize that to deny is to “not know.” God’s Will is that you are His Son. By denying this you deny your own will, and therefore do not know what it is. You must ask what God’s Will is in everything, because it is yours. You do not know what it is, but the Holy Spirit remembers it for you. Ask Him, therefore, what God’s Will is for you, and He will tell you yours. It cannot be too often repeated that you do not know it. Whenever what the Holy Spirit tells you appears to be coercive, it is only because you have not recognized your will.

Journal
This paragraph makes perfect sense to me. God created us by extending Himself, so that we are exactly as God is. There is a passage in the Course that says God gave us all of Himself. This being true, we share His power, His creative ability, His Being, and His Will. God’s will is my will. I have become confused about this because I made a different will so that I could have a different experience. But that is not my true will, only a device to allow an experience.

The Holy Spirit remembers my true will for me and holds it in my mind so that I can have access to it when I am ready. Now that I am ready to awaken from this dream of separation and return to Reality, I ask the Holy Spirit what God’s Will is for me. When I first started doing this I was conflicted. The ego mind, that I was still very identified with, felt this request was coercive and it balked at the idea of giving up its own will in favor of another will.

Now I understand that I am not the ego, and I identify more with my spirit than this foreign thought system, so I don’t resist as hard or as often as I used to. Often I accept God’s Will completely and joyfully, and I have never once regretted that decision. On the other hand, the ego will has brought me pain and suffering nearly every time. I’m a slow learner, but I do learn. I want God’s Will and I want to recognize it as my own. This is the all-important step I must take. Now I am mastering that choice each time I feel some reluctance to give up a false belief. It is work, but it is good work.

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Study of Text, Chapter 11: I: The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 7. 8-14-15

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 7

7 Could any part of God be without His Love, and could any part of His Love be contained? God is your heritage, because His one gift is Himself. How can you give except like Him if you would know His gift to you? Give, then, without limit and without end, to learn how much He has given you. Your ability to accept Him depends on your willingness to give as He gives. Your fatherhood and your Father are one. God wills to create, and your will is His. It follows, then, that you will to create, since your will follows from His. And being an extension of His Will, yours must be the same.

Journal
To know what God gives me, I must give as He gives, without limit and without end. What must I give? God is Love and this is what He gives, so this is what I must give. In other places in the Course, Jesus tells us that sharing and communication are the closest we come to creation and to love in the world. How do I do this? How do I share and communicate endlessly and without limit?

The first thing that comes to mind is that I share and communicate only in union. If I treat someone as if they are separate from me, with separate interests and separate goals, I will automatically be in competition with them. This is not sharing, and not communication. For instance, if I look on a customer as someone who needs to remain my customer to insure my income, I am not sharing or communicating; I am using him to fulfill my needs.

I might tell myself that I am going to be the best vendor ever and he is lucky to have me working for his interests, but the truth is while we share some goals and that works out for both of us, we are not in full communication. He wants something from me and I want something from him. That is not shared goals, but competing goals. I am not unlimited in my sharing.

I don’t think that I can actually share and communicate fully and completely without limits as long as I believe that there is this gap that exists between each of us. The fact that we are using these bodies to promote that belief doesn’t help us remember our union. But neither does it make it impossible to remember we are one. I know this is true because, though I have not succeeded in knowing we are one all the time, I have done it sometimes. If I can know what we are sometimes I can know it always.

So I practice it. I ask the Holy Spirit to look with me at my relationships. I ask Him to look with me at this customer I am talking to and to help me to see him truly. I do the same with all relationships, my relationships with my children, my friends, my coworkers; they are all the same relationship, because we are all one Family of God, one mind.

As I have become more and more open to His answer, I notice that where I used to feel needful in a relationship, now I feel loving. This is much closer to giving without limits. I am not consistent in this, not yet. But it is getting better and easier and I see how much happier and peaceful I am when I do succeed in giving fully, needing nothing in return. It is such a sweet thing, this giving as my Father gives. It is a gift of fatherhood, and I claim it now, as my Father, in His unlimited love, would have me do. And when I have accepted it fully, I will be very close to creating as God creates.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 11: I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 6. 8-13-15

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 6

6 God has given you a place in His Mind that is yours forever. Yet you can keep it only by giving it, as it was given you. Could you be alone there, when it was given you because God did not will to be alone? God’s Mind cannot be lessened. It can only be increased, for everything He creates has the function of creating. Love does not limit, and what it creates is not limited. To give without limit is God’s Will for you, because only this can bring you the joy that is His and that He wills to share with you. Your love is as boundless as His because it is His.

Journal
Jesus tells us that we have a place in the Mind of God that is ours forever, but a condition of keeping that place is to give it, as it was given us. We are creators and we are meant to increase the Mind of God through creation. We are without limits because Love is without limits, and thus we are to share in this way to know the joy of our boundless love.

What a picture this is! I am in God forever, creating forever, loving and joyful forever! There are no limits on Self and no limits on love. With no body made to limit and separate, there is nothing to fear, no sickness, suffering or death. Without an “other,” there is no one to push away and no reason to and no place to push him. In God all have all, so there is nothing to be jealous of, no reason for resentment, no feelings of rejection, abandonment, loss or lack.

Of course I examine my life and I see that this is not happening. In making this world of illusion, I have not created, that is I have not increased the Mind of God. This is not a world of limitless sharing and limitless love. In my desire to experience something else, I have tried to freeze love into forms I call bodies and other objects that are separate from each other, thus arresting creation at these artificial boundaries.

I have tried to limit the limitless. I have tried to lessen God. I do this again and again all day long. I see a homeless person and instead of recognizing God in this one, I see him as less than in so many ways, and different than me; please God, different than me. I see a beautiful and wealthy person and I fail to see God, and I fail to recognize this one is me, playing the beautiful and wealthy woman. Instead, I see only differences and feel only less than.

Where is the wholeness, the boundless love, the joy of creation in this thing I have made, and that I renew every day, every minute of the day? Where is God in this, where is Love? Yet, even here in this dream of not-God, I can choose to perceive differently and thus bring our sleeping mind closer to Awakening, closer to God and my place in God.
As I do this, as I allow more and more healing, I begin to feel something that is not a dream, or at least is a dream of something not a dream. As I see this homeless man, my mind expands to include him, to know him as the light hidden within those rags, in that stench. I know that light because that light remains in my mind as well. As our lights merge, our minds are enlightened.

If you saw us on the street you would never know that a miracle had occurred, but my heart feels it, and I never again feel quite the same degree of separation as I did before. There is a crack now in wall of isolation I have built between me and not-me that can never be sealed again. I find it easier and even joyful to continue this practice, to continue to allow the light in my mind to find the light in minds all around me.

This is how I find my way back to God, to Love, to creation, to my eternal place in the Mind of God. I notice someone near me and I think to myself, “There I am.” I open my heart and mind to this one, no barriers, no defenses, just the joy of reunion. I have, in the past, prayed and prayed for union, for Christ Vision, for forgiveness. All along, there was nothing for me to do except open to Love and let it in. I only needed to stop defending separation and just desire wholeness.

Holy Spirit, I love the thought of spending the day reuniting with my selves. As I go to work, see customers, drive in heavy traffic, and face all the other forms of separation we have put into place, please help me to remember my purpose. Help me to remember what you have shown me this morning. Please heal the mind that imagines separation. This is the experience I asked for but now I long for love and for union and I long for God.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 11: I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 5. 8-12-15

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 5

5 The laws of the universe do not permit contradiction. What holds for God holds for you. If you believe you are absent from God, you will believe that He is absent from you. Infinity is meaningless without you, and you are meaningless without God. There is no end to God and His Son, for we are the universe. God is not incomplete, and He is not childless. Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself. Do not deny Him His Son, for your unwillingness to accept His Fatherhood has denied you yours. See His creations as His Son, for yours were created in honour of Him. The universe of love does not stop because you do not see it, nor have your closed eyes lost the ability to see. Look upon the glory of His creation, and you will learn what God has kept for you.

Journal
I had to wait until I was through crying before I could write anything. I cried in joy and in sadness, joy that this is true and sadness that I cannot remember this. We are the universe, God and I and my creations; we are the universe of love. Oh my God, I long to remember this, to feel it, to know it. And from what Jesus says, this must be pretty simple since the universe of love does not stop just because I can’t see it, and my closed eyes have not lost the ability to see.

Everything real is still there and operating as usual. God still exists, and we still are in God and part of God. Our creations still exist and still love us. We have closed our eyes and imagined a world that is not love and are pretending it is real, pretending so well that we believe in our own illusion. How different this world of ours will look when we accept the truth and wake up, first within the world, and then from the world. And awakening from the world we will find ourselves back in God’s loving embrace, back with our creations, back in the universe of love. We will discover we never left except in our imagination.

When I read this phrase, “See His creations as His Son” I thought about something that has been occurring to me more and more often. I will see someone, a stranger maybe, and though the first impulse might be to judge, I am also aware of something else. I have the thought, “That is me standing there,” and with that realization comes a rush of love. It doesn’t stay, yet, but it was real for a moment. I think I am beginning to accept that we, the many of us, are one. I know I have said this and I have thought this, but now it has found a home in my mind and I am beginning to believe this. As I begin to see everyone as my self, I am getting closer to the memory of Love that is still in my mind.

(There is a YouTube video that has always touched me deeply and that I go back and listen to over and over. I didn’t know exactly why, but I think it is because it reminded me that I am part of the universe and the universe is in me.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g4d-rnhuSg)

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 11: I: The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 4. 8-11-15

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 4

4 Waiting is possible only in time, but time has no meaning. You who made delay can leave time behind simply by recognizing that neither beginnings nor endings were created by the Eternal, Who placed no limits on His creation or upon those who create like Him. You do not know this simply because you have tried to limit what He created, and so you believe that all creation is limited. How, then, could you know your creations, having denied infinity?

Journal
I still feel like I am waiting to forgive, to be peaceful, to wake up. It feels like there is this time lag between choosing chaos and choosing peace in whatever form the chaos is taking. It feels like I approach the veil, even peak behind it, and then I wait, thinking, “I’m not there yet.” I say that I live in God, but it feels like I live in time.

Lately, I have discovered the thought that now is the time. I don’t look at it too closely because what if it is not true. Or what if it is true. And yet, when else could one awaken except, now. What other time is there, really? God is eternal and therefore so am I. God is all there is, and so there is only eternity, and in eternity there is no time, no beginning, no ending.

What I have done within my mind is that I have tried to make eternity into something else. I have transformed formlessness into form, and placed gaps of nothing between the forms so that now it appears that there is separation between them. I have imagined it began and then it ends and then I have imagined little gaps between one event and another and called it time. And now one moment is separate from another moment, or so it seems. I have used the power of God to distort creation, to place limits where there is only limitlessness. I then called it reality and believed in it.

Now I wonder why I cannot remember my Creator or my creations. My mind is not so profoundly split as it once was, and I have begun to see through my illusions, and still, here I am.  But I am choosing peace and in choosing peace I am making a silent place in my mind, a place where I can meet my God.

I am learning to meet each confused thought, each chaotic moment in my life with the desire for the peace of God. Sometimes it feels like I am gritting my teeth as I insist that my mind belongs to God not the ego. But I know that will pass with “time” and I will be begin to meet each false thought with peace and it will feel joyful rather than a struggle. I know this is true because it is already beginning to happen.

The hardest part of this process has been that I could not believe that all I need to do to have peace is to choose peace. The ego mind fights this idea and calls it impossible. I will be upset about something and the ego wants to stay in that story, be angry about it, to feel unfairly treated, to fix it. I want only to disregard the story as irrelevant, and to choose peace.

It sometimes feels like Myron is struggling with the Angel of Peace, fighting for the right to remain in her righteous anger. I watch, and I feel the turmoil as if it is real and important. I ask the Holy Spirit to heal this rift in my mind, to remove these insane thoughts. Sometimes I ask to see the belief that is being played out here.

If I follow the belief to its origin, it always takes me to the same place. I think I accomplished the impossible. I made time and space and now there is a gap between Love and me that is too big to cross. And alone it is, but I am not alone. The Holy Spirit is my bridge and Jesus is my companion. Each time I use It to cross into peace, the imagined gap closes a bit more.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 11: I: The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 3. 8-10-15

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 3

3 If you were not part of God, His Will would not be unified. Is this conceivable? Can part of His Mind contain nothing? If your place in His Mind cannot be filled by anyone except you, and your filling it was your creation, without you there would be an empty place in God’s Mind. Extension cannot be blocked, and it has no voids. It continues forever, however much it is denied. Your denial of its reality may arrest it in time, but not in eternity. That is why your creations have not ceased to be extended, and why so much is waiting for your return.

Journal
God created me, and what He creates remains part of Him. I am an idea in the Mind of God, and ideas leave not their Source. The whole reason for making the idea of time and space was so that I could pretend to be someplace else for awhile, but that is all that happened. I am pretending that I can be outside God even though there is no outside God. I am pretending to be here for a awhile even though there is only eternity.

This illusion I made provides me with a mental landscape to play out impossible ideas within my mind. While this is happening, Reality remains unchanged. There is no empty place in God where I used to be. God has not stopped extending me, and I have not stopped extending my creations. Everything is as it always was and always will be. In fact, “was” and “will be” are meaningless words outside the illusion of time.

So much is waiting for my return and I long for my return as well. That is why I was drawn to A Course in Miracles, and why I am vigilant in my practice of all it offers me. I long for Home, for eternity, for God. I have been allowing the Holy Spirit to slowly back me out of this illusion so that I can know that my return was always accomplished. How loving is our Father that He would have my return to sanity be so gentle, and yet completely inevitable.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Peace of God is Everything I Want

There is no peace except the peace of God.

On Aug 3, I read this from Cate Grieves who has used the Course to Awaken in the world, and to achieve the peace of God:

“What I came to see was that if I desired anything in this world—even the smallest thing - just for an instant—I lost the peace. The most subtlest of an idea that my happiness could lie in something in this world—took me out of it.
The desire for the peace of God has to be our ONLY desire. Here is the answer—no compromise is possible in this. Lesson 185. I am here to say that this is possible. I’m not extra ordinary. I’m not special. I just didn’t compromise.”

Oh my gosh! Suddenly I saw the light! I saw that this is the answer for me. From Lesson 185, “I want the peace of God. To say these words is nothing. But to mean these words is everything.” And, “No one can mean these words and not be healed.” Then I looked again at what Cate said. She said that if she desired anything in the world, she lost her peace. And she said she wasn’t special or extra ordinary, just that she didn’t compromise. I knew, absolutely knew, that this is right and that I can and must do this.

So for the last few days I have been watching my mind with interest as I see what I have valued more than I valued the peace of God. I also wanted to see how it is that wanting something in the world moved me out of the peace of God. Here are some of the things I noticed.

I was in peace until I passed a mirror and had the thought that I really have to lose some weight. Just like that I was no longer at peace. That thought was followed by many others. I wondered what to do about my body, and what it means that I am having so much trouble losing weight. I started thinking about what I ate that day that I shouldn’t have. In that moment in which I decided that I need to lose weight, my body identity, the image I present to the world and that I think of as me, became what is important to me. I was no longer at peace.

Another time, I was at peace when the thought came to me that I wish my son would call me or that I could visit him. Then I felt sad and lonely and my mind thought up a special relationship story about this and was off and running. I had been happy and at peace, and I had a simple thought of missing my son. I didn’t think how much I love my son, which would not have disturbed my peace, and would have, in fact, brought me more joy. Instead, I thought he should be here with me, that I would be happier if he were here. I wanted the world to be different so I could be happy, and in that thought, I was no longer in peace.

I had pain and I remembered that pain is a choice. Jesus tells us this in many ways. In Chapter 8, The Body as Means or End, he says this.

“Sickness is a way of demonstrating that you can be hurt. It is a witness to your frailty, your vulnerability, and your extreme need to depend on external guidance. The ego uses this as its best argument for your need for its guidance. It dictates endless prescriptions for avoiding catastrophic outcomes.”

I was using pain to avoid knowing I am an eternal and Divine Being, the Son of God. I was using pain to keep myself in the illusion and bound to the ego. I was using pain to avoid the peace of God. Is that insane?

I have to work outside a lot and it has been very hot the last few days. While I thought about that and felt like I needed it to be cooler or I needed to not be working in the heat, I was miserable. I could not sustain the peace of God, because my mind kept going back to how drained I was, or how the high humidity felt like trying to breathe hot water. I wanted the world to be different. I chose something other than the peace of God.

But in each of these circumstances, I chose again. I remembered Lesson 185. I remembered that, “The peace of God is everything I want. The peace of God is my one goal; the aim of all my living here, the end I seek, my purpose and my function and my life, while I abide where I am not at home.” I know from years of doing this work, that I cannot simply say that I am not going to think certain thoughts and they stop. But I know that if I want these thoughts to be removed from my mind, they will be. The Holy Spirit responds to our slightest desire for healing. So this is what I did.

I saw that when these stray thoughts came into my mind, and I found myself wanting something besides peace, I immediately lost that wonderful, joyful peace. I reminded myself that the peace of God is everything I want. I asked the Holy Spirit to heal my mind of the belief that anything else can make me happy. I didn’t try to stop missing my son. I asked for healing, and I began to anticipate that healing. I am watching my mind and my feelings to see what it is like to feel only love for him and no need at all.

I didn’t try to stop caring about how I look. I just started watching for a change, not knowing what that would look like, but anticipating a way to see this that does not leave me feeling guilty and afraid. I anticipate feeling free! How that occurs or what it looks like is not my business. My desire for this healing is my part, the rest is for the Holy Spirit, and He does not need my help.

Yesterday the heat index where I was working was 102. I was fine. I was hot, but I was not suffering. I was at peace. It is going to be that high and higher all next week. I am at peace with that. I am not worried about it and I have no reason to dread it. I don’t feel like calling my family or friends and asking them to commiserate with me. I don’t feel like finding somewhere to place blame. I am at peace.

I spent the last few days watching my mind going back to the painful but familiar way of seeing the world as something to change in order to be happy, to seeing in the world something I need. But now I see that the peace of God really is everything I need. Though I hear the ego mind trying to pull me back into the illusion of need, and I notice the thoughts that there are some things that are not easily dismissed, I will happily continue this practice. Like Cate, I will not compromise. I love this!

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