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Study of Text, Chapter 11: VII: The Condition of Reality, P 1. 11-13-15

VII. The Condition of Reality, P 1

1 The world as you perceive it cannot have been created by the Father, for the world is not as you see it. God created only the eternal, and everything you see is perishable. Therefore, there must be another world that you do not see. The Bible speaks of a new Heaven and a new earth, yet this cannot be literally true, for the eternal are not re-created. To perceive anew is merely to perceive again, implying that before, or in the interval between, you were not perceiving at all. What, then, is the world that awaits your perception when you see it?

Journal
I remain a little confused about the world. As in this paragraph, Jesus talks about a world that is different than the world I see. I can understand that on every level. I have seen instances of a healed world as I allowed my mind to be healed. One moment I would be looking at the ego interpretation of a situation, and the next, I would ask for and receive the Holy Spirit’s interpretation, and what had been awful, was then seen (perceived) as perfect. I am not yet consistent in this practice.

Lesson 132 says that the world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. It also says this about the world.
“There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly. Ideas leave not their source. This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind.”

So again, the world is seen as being available to us, but seen as we would have it seen. It also says that we made the world we see. That seems to infer there is a world that is different than the world we see. Or maybe not. I could be wrong about my interpretation. Then this same lesson tells us that; “There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach.”

So is there a world or not? I tend to think that the world is part of my mind. It is what I think it is and as my mind heals the world heals. What happens to the world when our mind, as a whole, has been healed and we have all rejoined our Father? Does it exist still in our mind in its healed state, a reflection of Reality? I don’t know, but only have an opinion and an opinion is not truth no matter how strongly one might believe in it. I am putting away my opinions and am looking forward to being taught as we go through this section.

What I can know right now is that God did not create the world I see, and there is another way to see it whether it is real or not. This new vision is a worthy goal, whatever it means. This goal is attainable, and though it is probably not the end of what is attainable I think it is a step in that direction, and one I must take. I have always seen the world as it is interpreted by ego, but I am beginning to see it as interpreted by the Holy Spirit. The difference is one of peace and joy.

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Study of Text, Chapter 11: VI: Waking to Redemption, P 9. 11-11-15

VI. Waking to Redemption, P 9

9 You will awaken to your own call, for the Call to awake is within you. If I live in you, you are awake. Yet you must see the works I do through you, or you will not perceive that I have done them unto you. Do not set limits on what you believe I can do through you, or you will not accept what I can do for you. Yet it is done already, and unless you give all that you have received you will not know that your Redeemer liveth, and that you have awakened with him. Redemption is recognized only by sharing it.

Journal
I say that I am ready to awaken, but what that means, really, is that I am ready to know that I am awake, because as Jesus says here, if he lives in me, I am awake. How do I come to know that I am awake? Jesus says that I must see the works he does through me, and I must give as I have received. This is something I have been thinking about since I woke up this morning.

I have noticed that I am happiest when I am living the Course, and when I am teaching it in a more formal setting. Both of these times I am joyful and peaceful. For instance when there is drama going on and I am the observer rather than the participant, when I am the peaceful presence, my heart is filled with joy in spite of the chaos around me.

I was thinking this morning that when I am facilitating a student or teaching a class or presenting a workshop, I am what I teach and in that moment what I teach is redemption in some form. So in that moment, I am experiencing redemption because I am sharing it. That is why I feel so peaceful and so joyful when I do this work.

When I first began to reach out to others, allowing what I was being taught to come through me, it was surprising. I discovered that I was being taught as I taught. It was a little unsettling, this not knowing until it came through me. I was used to being prepared and feeling confident through my own efforts.

This was different and I was always afraid it would abandon me and leave me standing there with nothing to say. This fear was my weak sense of worthiness speaking to me, and robbed me of a lot of the joy I could have experienced. Jesus has taught me to trust him, and in so doing, I have learned to trust myself as well.

Now when I open to that teaching that teaches, I feel confident in the Teacher, rather than myself. I am not worrying about myself so I experience the joy of the moment fully, and I am at peace. The earlier experiences were helpful for both those who listened and for me, but now it is better. I stay aware of the voice I am listening to so that the ego does not take over, but because it is not about me and because my willingness is strong, there is more clarity and less conflicted thinking, therefore more joy.

I felt like Jesus was trying to tell me something this morning and as I write this it is becoming clearer to me. I have times when I am teaching through my actions and times when I am teaching more formally and in those moments I am sharing and so I am being redeemed and this is a joyful experience.

But what has been happening is that at other times I notice that I am reverting to the old way of being. I am listening to ego tell me that I am less than and that there is much to fear. I mostly stay aware of this in my mind, and I ask for healing. But my life feels like a struggle when I live this way. I think that Jesus is telling me I don’t have to do this, that it is just an old habit.

It feels like I am being told that what I know when I teach is known, and I don’t lose it because I am not teaching it. In other words, I could be joyful and peaceful all the time in the same way I am when I allow him to teach through me. I can break the habit of feeling like I am struggling to awaken. Until this moment, I didn’t even know that was what I was doing.

I hear you, Jesus, and I am ready to shift this kind of thinking. Please help me to do this.

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Study of Text, Chapter 11: VI: Waking to Redemption, P 8. 11-10-15

VI. Waking to Redemption, P 8

8 You have nailed yourself to a cross, and placed a crown of thorns upon your own head. Yet you cannot crucify God’s Son, for the Will of God cannot die. His Son has been redeemed from his own crucifixion, and you cannot assign to death whom God has given eternal life. The dream of crucifixion still lies heavy on your eyes, but what you see in dreams is not reality. While you perceive the Son of God as crucified, you are asleep. And as long as you believe that you can crucify him, you are only having nightmares. You who are beginning to wake are still aware of dreams, and have not yet forgotten them. The forgetting of dreams and the awareness of Christ come with the awakening of others to share your redemption.

Journal
I’m dreaming of crucifixion. That’s all that is happening; a bad dream, a nightmare, but still, just a dream. I cannot crucify or be crucified except in a dream. The Son of God cannot be crucified because that is not God’s Will. I am safe as are all my brothers, but as long as I judge and hold onto my grievances, as long as I place value in the separate-self and believe it is me, I will suffer for my beliefs.

We are beginning to wake up, and recognize that there is no value in our grievances, and so we are learning to forgive them. We are still aware of our dreams and most of us still become confused about what they mean. We ask the ego for an interpretation and believe what we hear. But, and this is the difference between being completely asleep and waking up, we notice how miserable it is to hold the grievance and how peaceful it is to let them go. So we ask again, this time directing our inquiry to the Holy Spirit.

This is our work right now, to become aware of the voice we are listening to, and to choose differently when we are not at peace. This is the way we end the dream of crucifixion. When it is time, we will be awake from all dreams and forget they ever existed. This occurs as our brothers awaken with us. Together we are redeemed.

My prayer for today is from The End of Death, by Nouk Sanchez

Holy Spirit, please help me to forgive myself for using my body to attack myself and to separate from your Love as my Holy Self.

If this prayer speaks to you, please feel free to exchange “body” with any other word, person, situation, that is being used to deny your Holy Self.

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Study of Text, Chapter 11: VI: Waking to Redemption, P 7. 11-9-15

VI. Waking to Redemption, P 7

7 You will not find peace until you have removed the nails from the hands of God’s Son, and taken the last thorn from his forehead. The Love of God surrounds His Son whom the god of crucifixion condemns. Teach not that I died in vain. Teach rather that I did not die by demonstrating that I live in you. For the undoing of the crucifixion of God’s Son is the work of the redemption, in which everyone has a part of equal value. God does not judge His guiltless Son. Having given Himself to him, how could it be otherwise?

Journal
How do I remove the nails from the hands of God’s Son? When I feel guilty for something I said or did, past or present, I remember that I am redeemed. I am forgiven. In this way, I am teaching innocence to myself, and undoing the crucifixion. It is the same when I make someone else guilty. I undo the crucifixion of the Son the moment I realize what I have done and ask for healing.

I have had the experience, as I expect everyone else has had, of being reluctant to forgive. It seems that it is myself I crucify the most often, and myself that I resist forgiving. It makes no difference if it is myself or someone else; in my refusal to forgive I am condemning the Son of God. Either way, myself or someone else, I am teaching guilt and so learning guilt, and blinding myself to innocence.

If I tell myself that I want to forgive but just can’t, I am being dishonest. The resistance to forgive is the desire to judge, to hold a grievance, and the desire to remain in the illusion of separation. It is a decision I make, a choice. When I am ready to be happy I ask the Holy Spirit to heal my mind and to show me another way to see this.

The more often I accept the Atonement for my judgments and release my grievances, the less I am able to tolerate the effects. I want the ease, and the lightness and the joy of being forgiven and forgiving. I laugh at myself sometimes when I realize that I am crucifying myself. I remember hearing Dolly Parton remark about someone doing this to himself. She said, “Get down off the cross. We need the wood.” Ha ha.

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Study of Text, Chapter 11: VI: Waking to Redemption, P 6. 11-5-15

VI. Waking to Redemption, P 6
6 Resurrection must compel your allegiance gladly, because it is the symbol of joy. Its whole compelling power lies in the fact that it represents what you want to be. The freedom to leave behind everything that hurts you and humbles you and frightens you cannot be thrust upon you, but it can be offered you through the grace of God. And you can accept it by His grace, for God is gracious to His Son, accepting him without question as His Own. Who, then, is your own? The Father has given you all that is His, and He Himself is yours with them. Guard them in their resurrection, for otherwise you will not awake in God, safely surrounded by what is yours forever.

Journal
God created us and so knows us. He is never mistaken in us, never doubts us, never condemns us. He knows us as part of Himself and so perfect and whole. Everything that frightens us is in our imagination. We can be free of it as soon as that is what we want without exception. We long to free ourselves of nothing that we are convinced is something. We long to disentangle ourselves from a dream.

As far as I can tell, the only thing that is required of us is that we fully and wholly desire to awaken and reality will show itself to us. Because we have scared ourselves so badly with what we made, wanting to awaken is not something we come to without help. We have to look at what is keeping us in the dream and choose against it.

It seems to me that A Course in Miracles was inserted into the dream to help us do this. It points out what is really happening. It gives us the tools to see clearly and make new choices. It comforts and reassures. It reminds us of what we have forgotten, and points to our Guide and Helper, so we will be able to break the spell of illusion we have woven.

Because this is a dream of separation, we must learn to see wholeness again. I would think that in order to believe I am separate from my brothers, I had to make them my enemy. Otherwise the deep love I have for them would bind me so tightly to them that I could not convince myself they were not part of me. Now, I must be willing to let that spell be broken. The Course is helping me to do that.

So this is what I do all the time now, because if nothing else, I have remembered enough that I want to remember it all. I want to leave behind this absurd idea and return my mind to its natural state of blissful existence in God. I want to remember my love for my brothers, rather than reject them. So I pay attention to my mistaken thoughts and beliefs, and I give all the willingness I have to allow them to be corrected.

This shows up in my life as anger and fear and guilt projected as all these little dramas and petty attacks. It shows up as the belief I must defend myself against even those I claim to love. A Course in Miracles has helped me to see that all of this is just the natural effect of believing something that is not true and that it can be undone as I question the validity of the thoughts that made it and then, through the grace of God, let them be undone.

I don’t have to atone for my sins because nothing has happened. God loves me and I love Him. I belong to God and He belongs to me. What could a dream of something else mean to me? I am here, God. Please wake me up.

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Study of Text, Chapter 11: VI: Waking to Redemption, P 5. 11-4-15

VI. Waking to Redemption P 5

5 Do not underestimate the power of the devotion of God’s Son, nor the power the god he worships has over him. For he places himself at the altar of his god, whether it be the god he made or the God Who created him. That is why his slavery is as complete as his freedom, for he will obey only the god he accepts. The god of crucifixion demands that he crucify, and his worshippers obey. In his name they crucify themselves, believing that the power of the Son of God is born of sacrifice and pain. The God of resurrection demands nothing, for He does not will to take away. He does not require obedience, for obedience implies submission. He would only have you learn your will and follow it, not in the spirit of sacrifice and submission, but in the gladness of freedom.

Journal
Jesus is helping me to understand why it is that I am so attracted to guilt and fear even though it is obviously painful for me, and clearly not necessary. It is because I have made the ego my god, and I worship at it’s altar. My devotion is powerful and so my slavery is as complete as my freedom. It’s crazy. I hurt myself through my decision to be hurt.

I can stop it by simply making a different decision. I can worship my creator instead of the false God I made to take His place. That is all that is required for me to get down off this cross and live in freedom. I do understand this. It is the reason I have chosen surrender as my path to God. I feel drawn to surrender even though it is not my natural inclination, at least in the world.

I have spent my life becoming independent. I have worked hard at it. Even in my study of the Course I have focused on letting go of the idea of victimization, and sometimes for the wrong reason, I think. Only recently have I accepted the idea that victimization is impossible. I am the maker of all things in my world so how could I be victim to anything. At first, though, I just wanted to be successful at being independent and strong.

As I let go of more false beliefs, I have more clarity. It is not something I earned. It is simply the effect of allowing my mind to be cleared of all that obstructed the truth. I am learning that I don’t know what anything means. I am coming to value the “I don’t know” mind. What a strange thing it is that the less I claim, the more I have.

The more dependent I become on my Father, the freer I am. I thought dependence was loss, but I was wrong. Loss of ego independence was not a sacrifice and it cost me nothing and gave me everything that I have so far been willing to accept. I am slowly coming to the realization that the self-will I used to treasure above all else doesn’t even truly exist. Being part of God, I share His Will. How could that be a sacrifice?

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Study of Text, Chapter 11: VI: Waking to Redemption, P 4. 11-3-15

VI. Waking to Redemption P 4

4 I am your resurrection and your life. You live in me because you live in God. And everyone lives in you, as you live in everyone. Can you, then, perceive unworthiness in a brother and not perceive it in yourself? And can you perceive it in yourself and not perceive it in God? Believe in the resurrection because it has been accomplished, and it has been accomplished in you. This is as true now as it will ever be, for the resurrection is the Will of God, which knows no time and no exceptions. But make no exceptions yourself, or you will not perceive what has been accomplished for you. For we ascend unto the Father together, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, for such is the nature of God’s Son as his Father created him.

Journal
To truly understand and accept my true nature, my complete safety and the absolute certainty of my return to God, it is necessary to accept that there is only God. I could not be separate from God because there is no separate from God. I will “return” to God because I never left. There is no time and so there is not a “time” I am not in God and part of God. In each moment, each eternal now, I am in God.

There is no will that is not God’s Will, so I am as He created me and nothing else could be true. I cannot have a will separate from God because there is no such thing. How could I be different from God and be in God? Clearly, something else is going on here. If only God is possible, then I must be part of God and in God and anything not in alignment with that truth, must not be real. I must be dreaming, surely. What I imagine to be real can only be an illusion.

This is all so self-evident when I sit here with my sweet brother, Jesus, and let him enlighten me about it. So why is it I still fall into the story and think that something is happening and it’s real and it matters, and I must do something about it? And what do I do about it? I call my story of Myron my life, but the truth is, if there were any such thing as death, this would be it. I am ready to resurrect from this pretense of death.

It is helping me to understand that within the vastness that is God, is Jesus. And within the vastness of Jesus, is me. And within the vastness of me, is every other brother. Whatever I believe about my brother, I therefore, must believe about myself. Whatever I believe about myself, I must believe about Jesus and about God.

I suppose that is why the thing most of us take from Jesus’ life is his pain and suffering in the crucifixion. We do that because we believe in pain and suffering and punishment. It is why we believed for so long, that God would sacrifice His Son for our sins. We believe in sacrifice and sin and retribution, so we believed it of God. But we are learning differently.

To be helpful to me now, I must reduce these lofty ideas to the level at which I find myself. Each time I see a brother, here is what I know.

When I meet anyone remember it is a holy encounter.
As you see him, I will see myself.
As I treat him, I will treat myself.
As I think of him, I will think of myself.
I never forget this, for in him I will find myself or lose myself.

In each encounter with a brother there is the potential for awakening, or for deepening my sleep. How I use that encounter is up to me, but the sheer potential for good is staggering. Holy Spirit, help me remember this, and help me let go of all nonsense that blocks this potential.

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