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Study of Text, Chapter 12: V. The Sane Curriculum, P 8. 3-4-16

V. The Sane Curriculum, P 8
8 You who have tried to learn what you do not want should take heart, for although the curriculum you set yourself is depressing indeed, it is merely ridiculous if you look at it. Is it possible that the way to achieve a goal is not to attain it? Resign now as your own teacher. This resignation will not lead to depression. It is merely the result of an honest appraisal of what you have taught yourself, and of the learning outcomes that have resulted. Under the proper learning conditions, which you can neither provide nor understand, you will become an excellent learner and an excellent teacher. But it is not so yet, and will not be so until the whole learning situation as you have set it up is reversed.

Journal
Our mind is split between God and ego, and as we use ego mind we are unable to learn or teach, because the ego mind has an absolute rule, that is, to seek and not find. So whatever I try to learn through the ego will inevitably fail, as will my efforts to teach. The part of my mind that is God can and will succeed in teaching and learning because it is not conflicted in its goal. All that is needed from me to be a successful learner and a successful teacher is that I listen to God only. With practice I have learned that I can do this, and doing it has taught me that I want to do it.

As part of my practice of learning to listen to only the God part of my mind, I have become very good at being vigilant for my thoughts. Yesterday, I was very aware of how the ego attempts to keep my attention and thus perpetuate the separation idea. First it gives me a problem. It attempts to disrupt the peace of my mind with either a possible future problem, or a regretful past.

If I am interested, that is if this thought triggers a belief in my mind, I think there is really a problem that needs to be solved. Then the ego attempts to give me a solution to the problem. The solution will not work, of course, because the problem is the goal, not the solution. This plays over and over in the mind. I have no idea if I can stop the ego attempts, but I can stop believing in them. I can stop listening to the ego by listening to the Holy Spirit instead.

I didn’t sleep much last night and the ego started in with the “problem of not much sleep” before I even got out of bed. Then it started in with solutions for this problem. I asked Holy Spirit what He would have me do with this, and the answer was to simply experience today without judging it. So when I have felt sleepy or foggy this morning, I have just sat back and enjoyed the feeling. It is not a problem unless I listen to the ego make it a problem.

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Study of Text, Chapter 12, V.The Sane Curriculum, P 7. 3-3-16

V. The Sane Curriculum, P 7

7 I have said that the ego’s rule is, “Seek and do not find.” Translated into curricular terms this means, “Try to learn but do not succeed.” The result of this curriculum goal is obvious. Every legitimate teaching aid, every real instruction, and every sensible guide to learning will be misinterpreted, since they are all for facilitating the learning this strange curriculum is against. If you are trying to learn how not to learn, and the aim of your teaching is to defeat itself, what can you expect but confusion? Such a curriculum does not make sense. This attempt at “learning” has so weakened your mind that you cannot love, for the curriculum you have chosen is against love, and amounts to a course in how to attack yourself. A supplementary goal in this curriculum is learning how not to overcome the split that makes its primary aim believable. And you will not overcome the split in this curriculum, for all your learning will be on its behalf. Yet your mind speaks against your learning as your learning speaks against your mind, and so you fight against all learning and succeed, for that is what you want. But perhaps you do not realize, even yet, that there is something you want to learn, and that you can learn it because it is your choice to do so.

Journal
When I read this I cried in frustration. It sounded like gibberish to me. I cried out to Jesus asking him what it means to me. Yesterday I spent the day going back and forth between my teachers, first feeling frustrated and angry, then asking the Holy Spirit to heal my mind and feeling peaceful, then back again to ego. I felt so discouraged with the whole thing and wondered if I could ever end this war in my mind. It didn’t feel like it could happen. By the end of the day I felt better, but some of that discouragement was left over in my mind this morning.

I don’t know why the ego is so strong in my mind right now. Maybe that part of my mind is afraid of the end. This morning it didn’t want to understand the meaning behind these words. It wanted to think that peace is impossible and that even if I understand the concepts, I can’t put them to work. It wants to believe that I am still the separated self and that isn’t going to change. What is the ego mind working so hard to hide from me? What does it not want me to remember?

Here is what comes into my mind when I ask that question. The ego doesn’t want me to recover the memory of being God, of choosing to have this experience, of everything I experience being something I want to experience, and something I chose. It cannot stop the flow of memories, but it can slow them down as it gets my attention with some drama or the other and I start to feel afraid or guilty because I believe the ego interpretation of it.

But what if everything that happens to me is perfect because it is helping me to wake up? What if all these dramas and fearful thoughts and even the things that I feel guilty about are what I am using to wake myself up. Battling my ego self over and over was frustrating, but in the end I chose God. When I got to the hotel I thought about the day and realized how often Spirit had helped me to see more clearly, how just the right thought entered my mind at just the right moment. At one point I felt such a strong desire to listen to a particular section of the Course while I was driving, and a little later when the ego was trying to bring me back into its story again, the words I had listened to helped me to see through the ego.

All of the things I thought and felt yesterday, while very uncomfortable, were actually helping me. I was given many opportunities to see what I don’t want to experience anymore, and many opportunities to make a different choice and to see that the choice is mine, always. How can I call that a failure? I had a necessary and important experience yesterday and today I go forward with more certainty than before.

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Study of Text, Chapter 12: V. The Sane Curriculum, P 6. 3-1-16

V. The Sane Curriculum, P 6
6 You do not know the meaning of love, and that is your handicap. Do not attempt to teach yourself what you do not understand, and do not try to set up curriculum goals where yours have clearly failed. Your learning goal has been not to learn, and this cannot lead to successful learning. You cannot transfer what you have not learned, and the impairment of the ability to generalize is a crucial learning failure. Would you ask those who have failed to learn what learning aids are for? They do not know. If they could interpret the aids correctly, they would have learned from them.

Journal
Jesus continues to impress on us that we cannot teach ourselves. If you have been a good student of the ego, and a good student of the world, this can be a hard pill to swallow. I was a good student in most subjects, and took pride in that. What I did not excel in, I avoided so that I wouldn’t feel bad about myself.

Now what I have learned is that none of this matters. None of it means anything. It is all just more story, more illusion. I have found it useful to learn to communicate in words and to write. There are other things that have been necessary to learn in order to be in this dream. But what matters, what does have meaning, I can only learn through the Holy Spirit.

This is one lesson I have learned and fully accept. I know the difference between having an intellectual understanding of concepts, and knowing these things so that they are no longer concepts but reality. And I fully accept that this process requires my cooperation, but not my effort. I can read A Course in Miracles all day long, and listen to it all night long, and it will not become real to me for all that work.

What I can do is ask the Holy Spirit to show me what He wants me to know about each situation. I ask Him to heal my mind of the false thoughts I still hold. I do not accept as true any concept I have learned on my own until I have questioned it with the Holy Spirit. I ask Him to teach me what is true and what is false, and then I ask Him to remove from my mind what is not true.

When I notice I am making plans on my own, that I am making decisions without Him, I change my mind. I know this will only bring me more confusion if I keep doing it. I pay attention to my feelings and when I am not happy I know there is a thought that needs to be healed, and ask Holy Spirit for that healing.

Yesterday I was listening to a co-worker complain about the company. I noticed that I agreed with what he was saying, though I could see that he was trying to solve this problem on his own and as a result, he was feeling hopeless. That was the part I did not agree with. I know that with the Holy Spirit nothing is hopeless. Because of the conflict in my own mind, I asked Holy Spirit what to say to this man.

At first, I was doing good, stepping back, waiting for the words to say, but eventually, I started feeling like he was dragging me down to where he was. Later I took this thought to Holy Spirit. He told me that no one could drag me down. What happens is that my own beliefs, some of which I am unaware on a conscious level, get triggered. It was my own buried beliefs and fears that I was reacting to, not my co-worker.

Here is another thing Holy Spirit showed me. I thought I was disturbed by the situation. But the situation merely reflected the disturbance in my mind. In other words, fear, doubt and uncertainty were in my mind. Then the dissatisfaction and subsequent fear of what was going on in the company unfolded as this story of me and my co-worker having this talk.

The belief in the mind always comes first, then the situation. I was not afraid of what was happening at work, what was happening at work was the inevitable effect of my fear. Thank you, Holy Spirit. This is not something I could have taught myself. Even if I understood the concept, I cannot teach myself to know this in my heart. I cannot transfer this knowledge so that I know it in every circumstance of which I am aware. I gratefully retire as my own teacher and accept you as my teacher.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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