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Study of Text, Chapter 12, VI.The Vision of Christ, P 6. 3-15-16

VI. The Vision of Christ, P 6

6 Every child of God is one in Christ, for his being is in Christ as Christ’s is in God. Christ’s Love for you is His Love for His Father, which He knows because He knows His Father’s Love for Him. When the Holy Spirit has at last led you to Christ at the altar to His Father, perception fuses into knowledge because perception has become so holy that its transfer to holiness is merely its natural extension. Love transfers to love without any interference, for the two are one. As you perceive more and more common elements in all situations, the transfer of training under the Holy Spirit’s guidance increases and becomes generalized. Gradually you learn to apply it to everyone and everything, for its applicability is universal. When this has been accomplished, perception and knowledge have become so similar that they share the unification of the laws of God.

Journal
Jesus says that as I perceive more and more common elements in all situations,, the transfer of training under the Holy Spirit’s guidance increases and becomes more generalized. This is when I start to apply it to everyone and everything. This has already happened for me, though I still resist it for awhile sometimes.

The way I see this generalization on my part is that all things I see with my eyes are really just symbols of what is going on in my mind. All errors I see in my brother are errors I see in my own mind and then project onto my brother. All fearful situations in my life are manifestations of the fear in my mind. I know this is true all the time and in all situations.

The reason perception and knowledge are not closer to becoming one in my mind is that I still resist. It is a kind of passive resistance as I pretend I don’t understand why and how this is all happening “to” me. Once I see what I am doing it never fails to make me laugh. “Fell for it again, ego, but now that I see it, I will not so readily succumb to the old ego story again next time.” And this is how the transfer of training increases and becomes more generalized.

Here is an example. I learn through the Course that my anger is really fear. As I become open to knowing this, more ready to be taught, the Holy Spirit shows me how this works. I see that I was angry with my boss, and I asked Holy Spirit how this was fear.

It sure seemed like he was being a jerk and I had every justification for my anger. Then as I opened my mind I saw the fear in my boss and understood why he was being a jerk. Then I saw the fear in my mind as I saw my feelings of helplessness in the face of his behavior. So it’s true, anger in this case, or rather in both of our cases, was just fear.

Then another time, I was angry with my ex-husband. More than ever I saw his actions and words as being the cause of my anger. I felt completely justified in seeing him guilty of making me angry. But I had been shown something different before, and so I was willing to be shown again.

When I asked what Holy Spirit saw when He looked at this situation, I understood that it was confusion. We were both lost in the darkness of our own thoughts and didn’t know how to get out. We were children who had wandered off to play and stayed out too late. Now it was night and we couldn’t find our way home. We blamed each other for this predicament, because we were afraid and didn’t know what to do.

Each time in my life when I have brought my anger to the Holy Spirit and asked for a different interpretation, He has shown me the fear. Eventually, looking for the fear became second nature, and now I do it all the time. It is so much easier to forgive frightened children than to face down angry enemies. It was easy to forgive my ex-husband when I realized he was just acting out of his fear. I know how that feels.

I do this with all of the Holy Spirit’s lessons. I practice what He would have me do until I begin to see His lesson in every circumstance. I practice the solution until the solution becomes obvious and I practice the solution until it becomes something I want more than the problem. I learn to trust even in those circumstances that seem obscure, because I now believe in the solution and I believe it always works. I have achieved transfer of learning.

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Study of Text, Chapter 12: VI. The Vision of Christ, P 5. 3-15-16

VI. The Vision of Christ, P 5
5 When you have seen this real world, as you will surely do, you will remember us. Yet you must learn the cost of sleeping, and refuse to pay it. Only then will you decide to awaken. And then the real world will spring to your sight, for Christ has never slept. He is waiting to be seen, for He has never lost sight of you. He looks quietly on the real world, which He would share with you because He knows of the Father’s Love for Him. And knowing this, He would give you what is yours. In perfect peace He waits for you at His Father’s altar, holding out the Father’s Love to you in the quiet light of the Holy Spirit’s blessing. For the Holy Spirit will lead everyone home to his Father, where Christ waits as His Self.

Journal
I can wake up and see the real world, Jesus says, but first I must learn what it is costing me to remain in the dream, and then, as he says, refuse to pay it. I am now fully aware of that cost. It includes sadness and fear and guilt.  In the dream I instead of being joyful, I am depressed. Instead of being satisfied and complete, I am empty and searching, always searching. Instead of seeing love everywhere I look, I see enemies and the need to defend myself. I am always looking for someone to blame, always trying solutions that never really work.

So I am fully aware of the cost of sleeping and dreaming of separation. I also know how to back out of this dream and I have begun to wake up. I see an enemy and I ask the Holy Spirit who it is in front of me. I am told that it is Christ, and I ask to see him. According to my willingness to step back from my own personal judgments, I see something holy and am forever changed. Never again is reality as obscured as it was before. I just keep doing this with every false picture. The joy and peace that I experience is strong motivation to continue.

Sometimes it feels like it is slow going and that I will never do this. I cannot even imagine why I would still prefer to keep this little ego idea intact knowing what I know. If I don’t understand why I want the little self, how will I ever be free of it? Then I start to think I really do want the self, and maybe this is all a trick by God to get me close enough to punish me and snatch my self away from me. Ha ha. This is the ego mind asking these questions and applying its twisted logic to something it can’t understand. The ego figures if you can’t beat them, join them, so it studies the Course along with me, “trying” to help. Not interested!

Here has what has helped me to get on course and to stay there with as few side trips into ego land as possible. I have one purpose and that is the peace of God. Every time I notice that I have taken up a different goal than the peace of God, I stop myself and remember… one goal, one purpose, one function. I want the peace of God because that is a peace that cannot be undone. Nothing can touch the peace of God.

I know this is true because I have experienced this. I have been in the midst of great personal loss and have remained in perfect peace, untouched by that loss. The same for strife. I have experienced the idea that someone wants to attack me and known that the result of this attack would change things, and still my peace remained untouched. The peace of God is independent of what seems to be happening in the world.

And I have also turned my back on that peace and submerged myself in the drama of the moment. This happens as soon as I forget my one goal, and take up another. I am doing my job and enjoying my customers and the fellowship of my co-workers, then I will hear some words, or have some thoughts and suddenly I am on alert. Is that an attack, I wonder? I mentally begin my preparations for battle.

Now I have another goal and that is to defend myself. And just like that, I have sold the peace of God. But hey, I’m back in charge. I’m my “self” again. I know what to do here, I’ve learned a lot about attack and defense in my 67 years of practice. I feel comfortable in that old role as I suit up for the fight. I also feel anxious and afraid and flooded with memories of past experiences that often turned out badly.

These days I pretty quickly change my mind. That peace of God stuff is something else, very compelling. I miss it even though I have given it away myself. I miss it right away. Thank God, very literally, for the Holy Spirit Who waits patiently in my mind for me to come to my senses and ask for His help. The peace of God is mine as soon as that is all I want. It doesn’t take long for me to remember that it really is all I want.

I don’t know how much longer I am going to fall for the ego desire for self-sufficiency and drama, but I know what to do about it and I will do it. The peace of God is my only goal even when I forget and think that I have another goal as well. 

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Study of Text, Chapter 12: VI. The Vision of Christ, P 4. 3-14-16

VI. The Vision of Christ, P 4

4 Correction is for all who cannot see. To open the eyes of the blind is the Holy Spirit’s mission, for He knows that they have not lost their vision, but merely sleep. He would awaken them from the sleep of forgetting to the remembering of God. Christ’s eyes are open, and He will look upon whatever you see with love if you accept His vision as yours. The Holy Spirit keeps the vision of Christ for every Son of God who sleeps. In His sight the Son of God is perfect, and He longs to share His vision with you. He will show you the real world because God gave you Heaven. Through Him your Father calls His Son to remember. The awakening of His Son begins with his investment in the real world, and by this he will learn to re-invest in himself. For reality is one with the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit blesses the real world in Their Name.

Journal
Christ will look on what I see with love, and this will be the real world. My eyes will be opened to the truth and how glorious it will be to see my illusion transformed! This is not hard because nothing needs to change, really. My eyes are closed in sleep and I dream of conflict, of anger and fear and guilt. I am being awakened ever so gently, by one who knows me and loves me.

Christ is awake and He sees the real world, and will share that vision with me. But for me to see it, I must become convinced that what I see now is not reality, then I must become convinced that I don’t have to see it anymore and that I don’t want to see it.  Until I believe this, I will keep my eyes closed and continue to dream.

I am ready to wake up, though. That is why the Course is in my life and why I do the work asked of me. I look at my story and realize it is a reflection of the beliefs I am holding in my mind. I ask the Holy Spirit what it all means and He judges it as all simply not true. It is not true. I am not vulnerable. I am not a victim. I am not sad or afraid. The world is not a threat. No people are attacking me, and I don’t want to attack them.

That is the simple truth. I mostly believe it now, because I am no longer in a deep sleep. I am rousing from my long slumber. But I still am not fully awake, and so I continue to dream and sometimes to become confused about the dreams and believe in them. Some ideas still attract me, and some stories still scare me. But I continue to look with Holy Spirit and my sleep becomes lighter, reality closer. God so loves me that through the Holy Spirit He blesses the world I made, and the ego world is transformed right before my eyes.

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Study of Text, Chapter 12: VI. The Vision of Christ, P 3. 3-10-16

VI. The Vision of Christ, P 3
3 You do not want the world. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it you look upon with love. This gives it the only reality it will ever have. Its value is not in itself, but yours is in you. As self-value comes from self-extension, so does the perception of self-value come from the extension of loving thoughts outward. Make the world real unto yourself, for the real world is the gift of the Holy Spirit, and so it belongs to you.

Journal
Jesus is making a clear distinction between the world as we typically see it, and the real world, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit. When I see someone as an enemy, my competition at work or the woman who rushed to grab the parking space I was clearly moving toward, I see the world I made. If I am angry at something done to me or to anyone else; if I am afraid of something happening in the world, terrorists or thieves, then I am looking at the world I made with the ego.

As I begin to ask the Holy Spirit to heal my mind of these ego thoughts, I extend love instead of hate and fear, and I start to see the real world. That is how it is a gift of the Holy Spirit, it is as He heals my mind that I see the world differently.  What I see of the ego world is not real and not there. It is a picture of my beliefs, but not of reality.

Is the real world, real? Does it exist outside my mind? I think I understand that the only value the world has, and its only reality is the love in which I look upon it. It is the love that I extend that has value and that is real.  Before I know reality, I will know the real world. It is like a step I take, a stop I make, on the way home.

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Study of Text, Chapter 12.VI.The Vision of Christ, P 2. 3-9-16

VI. The Vision of Christ, P 2

2 The Holy Spirit is your strength because He knows nothing but the spirit as you. He is perfectly aware that you do not know yourself, and perfectly aware of how to teach you to remember what you are. Because He loves you, He will gladly teach you what He loves, for He wills to share it. Remembering you always, He cannot let you forget your worth. For the Father never ceases to remind Him of His Son, and He never ceases to remind His Son of the Father. God is in your memory because of Him. You chose to forget your Father but you do not really want to do so, and therefore you can decide otherwise. As it was my decision, so is it yours.

Journal
In Lesson 70 Jesus says we are our own salvation and nothing outside us saves us. The Holy Spirit is not outside us. He is part of us, in our mind to help us remember the truth of our nature, and with us forever to protect our holy mind. He is the memory of God and the memory of us, what we are as part of God. He knows we have forgotten our Self, but He only knows us as we are.

God is the source of the Holy Spirit’s knowing and the Holy Spirit is the source of our knowing. We chose forgetfulness, but through the Holy Spirit we will choose awakening to the truth. Jesus has done this already, and so it is done for us as we are all one. All that is left is for us to accept our awakening.

Jesus gave us A Course in Miracles to help us understand that there is nothing in the illusion worth keeping, that we want to wake up from this dream, that it is safe to do so, and that we can do so. All we have to do is follow his simple instructions and as our mind heals, we naturally change our minds and choose God. There is nothing we need do to be what we are, and we have unlimited help to do what must be undone in order to remember our Divinity.

It seems so simple to do this work and so inevitable that I will awaken, I wonder how it is that I keep returning my mind to my ego story. I see I must still believe it has some value to me. I was reading something I wrote awhile back and laughed because it made clear why I think I need the ego. Here is what I said.

“All along I have a true will, the will I share with God. It sits alongside the small personal will that I have been listening to. I can reclaim my true will by simply desiring to do so. Sometimes I think that I have done this, and I feel such joy and peace you wouldn’t believe. I cannot imagine why I ever wanted a separate will.

Then I return to my separate made-up self and again I am enthralled with the idea that I need it. I think I need to defend myself against a co-worker and I cannot use God’s Will to attack so I pick up my little self will again. Or I think that I need to look different, or I need more money, or I believe I am guilty, and God’s Will does not recognize any of this as true, so I turn to the little will. It brings me proof that I am right to be afraid and offers me lifetimes of advice that has never met a single one of these needs.”

Ha ha! Why do I keep falling for this? Well, today is a new day, a clean slate. I am willing to look at whatever shows up in my mind that I still believe and think I need. Holy Spirit, I ask for your constant guidance today. Look with me at all these silly thoughts and correct them for me. I want only the truth. I want no defense, no attack, no guilt to remain in my mind. I want to feel safe and to feel loved. May I be always attuned to your loving and protective presence. Thank you.

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Study of Text, Chapter 12: VI. The Vision of Christ, P 1. 3-8-16

VI. The Vision of Christ
1 The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world and lose your own soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you cannot lose your soul and there is no gain in the world, for of itself it profits nothing. To invest without profit is surely to impoverish yourself, and the overhead is high. Not only is there no profit in the investment, but the cost to you is enormous. For this investment costs you the world’s reality by denying yours, and gives you nothing in return. You cannot sell your soul, but you can sell your awareness of it. You cannot perceive your soul, but you will not know it while you perceive something else as more valuable.

Journal
I was reviewing Section III, The Investment in Reality, which talks about the real world. It says that we made the world we see by projecting ego thoughts from our mind. It also talks about the real world. Here again, Jesus is talking about the real world, or as he says here, “the world’s reality.” If I made the world I see with my ego thoughts, I can make a real world with the thoughts I think with God.

Yesterday I was annoyed with everything at work. Because my thoughts have both power and consequences, I made an anxious, unpleasant world. I sold my soul, so to speak, and got nothing good in return. As the day went on and I realized what I was doing, I withdrew my projections and accepted responsibility for my own experience. Peace returned. My powerful, consequential thoughts added to reality rather than to illusion.

Yesterday is just an example of how I have made a world so completely unlike reality and also an example of how I can undo that world. The world we see is a reflection of our thoughts. To change the world, we must change our thoughts. As Jesus tells us elsewhere in the Course, it is a matter of motivation. As I have given my ego thoughts to the Holy Spirit to be healed and thus have seen how different the world can be, I am highly motivated to continue this process.

Right now the world is unstable for me. I sometimes see the world as a frightening, vengeful place. But as my mind has healed, I have also seen a safe world that loves me and supports me. The only thing that changed is my mind. What kind of world do you think we will see when all of us have experienced this change of mind?

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Study of Text, Chapter 12: V. The Sane Curriculum, P 9. 3-7-16

V. The Sane Curriculum, P 9
9 Your learning potential, properly understood, is limitless because it will lead you to God. You can teach the way to Him and learn it, if you follow the Teacher Who knows the way to Him and understands His curriculum for learning it. The curriculum is totally unambiguous, because the goal is not divided and the means and the end are in complete accord. You need offer only undivided attention. Everything else will be given you. For you really want to learn aright, and nothing can oppose the decision of God’s Son. His learning is as unlimited as he is.

Journal
Of myself I can do nothing, but I am not of myself. I am of God and I have His Voice to lead me out of this interesting and awful story. I can teach as I learn and learn as I teach as long as I use my Guide, listen to His Voice and give Him my thoughts to be purified, corrected and sometimes just removed. There is no limit to my potential and I will follow my teacher to God.

I know this is true. I know the ego mind is a confused jumble of untrue thoughts. I know I am rapidly loosing interest in what it thinks it knows. I am very good at being vigilant for my thoughts, and always sooner rather than later, I will ask for healing. What is there left for me to do? I see a couple of ideas that I still need to practice.

I know that it is absolutely necessary that I have only one goal. As long as there are two goals in my mind, I am maintaining the split that is the ego. I know this but I still need to practice it. It is entirely too easy for me to pick up another goal and believe it is important, maybe even necessary. So this is something the Holy Spirit is helping me to be vigilant for. As soon as I see I have done this, I change my mind. This is my practice.

The other idea that needs my practice is that I divide my attention. I still listen to the ego sometimes rather than Spirit. Again, this is something that I am willing to let go. It seems harder for some reason. The ego mind chatters incessantly and eventually it chatters on about something that interests me. But I am learning to disregard it.

What seems to be helping me in this is to relax and allow and trust. I relax around my errors, I allow them to be healed and I trust that I am doing this and will succeed in spite of what are sometimes appearances to the contrary. Sometimes I want to question the Holy Spirit as to why I am not given more help.

The reason for this lack of trust is because I get constricted around my seeming failures and start to believe in them more than I believe in my Self. When this happens I realize that I am not being singular in my teacher or my goal. I relax again, quiet my mind, and wait for the comfort and the guidance that always comes.

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