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Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 5. 12-20-16

X. Release from Guilt, P 5

5 Determine, then, to be not as you were. Use no relationship to hold you to the past, but with each one each day be born again. A minute, even less, will be enough to free you from the past, and give your mind in peace over to the Atonement. When everyone is welcome to you as you would have yourself be welcome to your Father, you will see no guilt in you. For you will have accepted the Atonement, which shone within you all the while you dreamed of guilt, and would not look within and see it.

Journal
Christmas is a good time to look at these relationships and to notice when and how I am holding myself to the past through holding my family to their past. On Christmas I will be with my children and their families. My prayer will be to receive help and guidance to see them as they are, not as I thought they were. Jesus is telling us that it is not hard to do this. He says it will take a minute, even less, to be freed from the past. I can do this.

Every other year, everything happened at my house so I would be very busy and distracted as I got things prepared and played the hostess. This year it is going to happen at my daughter’s house, so I am free to observe and to decide and to accept the Atonement each time I notice that I am holding onto the past. As often happens when I make a decision for God, all things fall into place so that I can best use the opportunity. Even knowing this, I am in awe at the perfection of this situation, how everything is arranged for my good.

Another thing I read in this paragraph that touched me deeply is this: “When everyone is welcome to you as you would have yourself be welcome to your Father, you will see no guilt in you.” I learn that there is no guilt in me by accepting that there is no guilt in my brothers. I am told by Jesus that God loves me unconditionally. God looks at me and He sees only what He created, not the dream character I made. I want to do that. I want to see my brother only as he was created. I want to know that the body I see with my body’s eyes is an illusion and meaningless. “God, please show me what You see.”

When I do this, when I look past the illusory body/personality, I will see innocence and perfection, because that is what is within each of us. No matter how deeply we bury it, our true nature, our Self, remains unaffected by the ego thoughts and beliefs. Jesus says it this way: “For you will have accepted the Atonement, which shone within you all the while you dreamed of guilt, and would not look within and see it.” The Atonement has always been in us, just denied. As we accept it, we Awaken to our true nature, to love and peace and joy, because that is what we are. The way to the Atonement is through our brothers, so I am motivated to ask for the Atonement the next time I think I see a spot of guilt anywhere.

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Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 4. 12-19-16

X. RELEASE FROM GUILT, P 4
4 When you maintain that you are guilty but the source of your guilt lies in the past, you are not looking inward. The past is not in you. Your weird associations to it have no meaning in the present. Yet you let them stand between you and your brothers, with whom you find no real relationships at all. Can you expect to use your brothers as a means to “solve” the past, and still to see them as they really are? Salvation is not found by those who use their brothers to resolve problems that are not there. You wanted not salvation in the past. Would you impose your idle wishes on the present, and hope to find salvation now?

Journal

I immediately thought of my oldest daughter, Sheryl. I have memories from her childhood that pop up into my mind that used to cause me extreme distress. Some of those memories still carry a sharp sting. I have spent her whole life trying to somehow make up for my mistakes as a mother, to somehow atone for my sins. And so I used that relationship as a way to solve the past. And all along, all she has done is love me. And, weirdly, her present love has not seemed as meaningful to me as my imagined sins. If I keep maintaining that past relationship with Sheryl, I will never have a present relationship with her.

Even as I write this (and I know that what Jesus says is true) I hear the ego mind dredging up old stories and insisting I can’t just pretend they didn’t happen. The ego mind says that they make me guilty and unworthy of her love. This is how the ego maintains the illusion, carrying the past into the present and assuring the future remains the same. This is the purpose of guilt, to keep the story going through blocking actual relationships. It stands like an impenetrable wall between our brothers and us, preventing union. There! Separation is assured and the ego gets to exist in the mind another day. Jesus is helping us to understand it doesn’t have to be this way. There is a simple way out.

“You wanted not salvation in the past. Would you impose your idle wishes on the present, and hope to find salvation now?”

I had a strange reaction to this. I don’t know how to express my feelings. I guess I felt silly. All this drama, all the tears and the frustration, the years of guilt and atoning, and Jesus reduces my angst to “idle wishes”? I also felt resistance from the ego mind to this idea. And maybe that is why I felt confused. I have prayed for release from the belief in guilt and when I am offered that release, I don’t want it. I don’t want to be wrong? Maybe. If Jesus is right that my worry and regret were over idle wishes, then did I waste my life agonizing over my sins? How could something so painful and persistent be reduced to idle wishes? Is this a joke?

And yet, as I think of this I feel a lightening in my mind, a burden lifted, a darkness dissipated. I will accept this extraordinary gift! I go back to the two sentences and I realize something else. Jesus is saying that in the past I had an idle wish to be guilty, and guilt precludes salvation, so I had an idle wish to remain outside salvation. Guilt was the way I assured this wish would be granted. Now I want salvation. I have experienced separation and I am through with it and want to return to my natural and true state as the divine being that I am. Jesus is just pointing out the obvious to me. If guilt is how I maintained the illusion, then keeping that idle wish in my mind will prevent me from achieving my new goal, which is to awaken from the dream of separation. It is just an idle wish, nothing more, nothing real or strong or immovable, just an idle wish. How could something so insubstantial stop me from accepting salvation?

Whooo! I’m feeling so light that I might float away!

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Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 3. 12-15-16

X. RELEASE FROM GUILT, P 3
3 In any union with a brother in which you seek to lay your guilt upon him, or share it with him or perceive his own, you will feel guilty. Nor will you find satisfaction and peace with him, because your union with him is not real. You will see guilt in that relationship because you put it there. It is inevitable that those who suffer guilt will attempt to displace it, because they do believe in it. Yet though they suffer, they will not look within and let it go. They cannot know they love, and cannot understand what loving is. Their main concern is to perceive the source of guilt outside themselves, beyond their own control.

Journal
If I want to love and feel loved, I must let go of the idea of guilt. Holding onto guilt precludes love. Seeing guilt in someone prevents true union with that one. In fact, seeing guilt outside myself increases my belief that I am guilty. I remind myself frequently how this works. I believe in guilt and this belief stems from the idea that I separated myself from God. I don’t want to acknowledge this unconscious guilt, so I project it onto others in the mistaken belief that if I see it outside myself then it is not in me. As long as it is outside of me I don’t have to do anything about it. It seems to be someone else’s problem.

There is only one way to deal with this self-perpetuating situation. I must break the cycle by taking responsibility for the guilt I see. As I take responsibility for the guilt I see, The Holy Spirit helps me to see differently. I have done this and though I am still working on this, I have experienced a lot of success. It is actually very simple. I am innocent and so is everyone else. There! No guilt! God did not create guilt so guilt does not exist. God created us innocent and so we are innocent. Again, no guilt!

It only feels difficult because we tend to get involved in the stories that represent the guilt we believe in. The stories seem to prove guilt, but that is backwards. The belief in guilt came first, then the stories are projected outward. Of course the stories seem to prove guilt, they were made for that purpose. (L 325: From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as one’s own.) Understanding that guilt was in the mind and then given form as a guilt story, we can then use the story to undo the belief in guilt.

I’ve talked about the relationship problems I had at work before I retired. I kept seeing my boss and my office manager as guilty. They did things that seemed to prove they were guilty. But eventually, I was able to look away from the story and focus on the lesson it presented. I saw that believing in guilt was making everything worse, and that in doing so I was robbing myself of love and peace.

So I asked the Holy Spirit to show me another way to see this. I had to turn it over to Him several times before I was willing to leave it with Him, but eventually, everything changed. I began to see them as innocent and I began to love them. It was actually amazing to me. The situation I had used to prove their guilt suddenly proved their innocence. As I let go of the idea they were guilty, I felt less guilt within myself. Now I don’t believe in guilt as much as I did before.

The stories are helpful in that they show us the effects of our beliefs, and offer us the opportunity to ask for correction. But they are not the focal point. The guilt came first, and then a story of that guilt was projected. (L 15: My thoughts are images I have made) It is the belief in guilt itself that we will eventually let go of. And every time we release one of our images, accept that it is just a false image, and allow the Holy Spirit to correct our thoughts, we come closer to letting go of the belief in guilt. One day we will make only beautiful, peaceful images because there will be no guilt in our mind.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 2. 12-13-16

X. Release from Guilt, P 2

2 Insane ideas have no real relationships, for that is why they are insane. No real relationship can rest on guilt, or even hold one spot of it to mar its purity. For all relationships that guilt has touched are used but to avoid the person and the guilt. What strange relationships you have made for this strange purpose! And you forgot that real relationships are holy, and cannot be used by you at all. They are used only by the Holy Spirit, and it is that which makes them pure. If you displace your guilt upon them, the Holy Spirit cannot use them. For, by pre-empting for your own ends what you should have given Him, He cannot use it for your release. No one who would unite in any way with anyone for his individual salvation will find it in that strange relationship. It is not shared, and so it is not real.

Journal
When I was growing up I was very much influenced by my mom’s relationship with my father. This isn’t unusual, of course, but how this worked for me is so perfect to help me understand what Jesus is telling us in this paragraph. My mom loved my dad, but she also hated him. He didn’t live up to what she expected of him. He was an alcoholic and when drunk was violent. He didn’t always provide for us the way she thought a man should, and I think that was really upsetting to her. She was very prideful when it came to being able to take care of yourself financially, and she was always concerned about what others would think of us.

When I got old enough to date, she started telling me what kind of man to marry. She talked all the time about marrying someone who would take care of me, who would provide a good living. She said I should marry a doctor or an engineer because someone in that profession would always make enough money. Since at that time in my life I was very rebellious and usually did the opposite of what I was told, you would think I would have ignored this. But I guess all those years of being influenced by mom’s fear of lack added up. I did actually marry an engineer, the first guy I knew who met my mom’s criteria for a safe marriage.

“No one who would unite in any way with anyone for his individual salvation will find it in that strange relationship.”

That was my first husband. I married him for my own individual salvation. My mom believed that salvation lay in being taken care of and I believed her, so I did the only reasonable thing I could do considering my beliefs. Not that I didn’t like and love this man, but the relationship was built on a false foundation. I didn’t understand any of this at the time or understand my own motives enough to even question my choices. I don’t blame myself or my mom. We were both doing the best we could with what we had to work with at the time.

It is a good learning situation, though. Whether I had a clear understanding of the situation or not, there would have certainly been guilt. We cannot take what we think the other person has without feeling guilt for it. He had what I thought I needed and I took it and in my mind offered little in return. I was not consciously aware of this feeling, but I was uneasy in the relationship because some part of my mind believed I was a thief and I felt guilty for it. This also left me feeling more unworthy than I was going into the relationship. Though I was a very religious person at the time, it never occurred to me to turn the relationship over to God. I guess I missed Catechism the day they talked about that.

Perhaps if we had been older and more mature we might have made the relationship last longer, maybe even long enough for us to gain some wisdom. The love was there but the spiritual foundation was not. I displaced my guilt onto this relationship. I began to see him as the cause of my discontent. At that time in my life I could not have taken anymore blame, nor did I have the spiritual understanding to know the difference between blame and responsibility. So like most of us do a lot of the time, I refused to look too closely at myself and simply blamed him.

I think nearly all relationships begin as special relationships in which we seek to get our perceived needs met. It is what we know in this world of separate beings with individual needs. But if we are spiritually wise, we can use those relationships to learn differently. We can give the relationship to the Holy Spirit and use all the elements of it, the challenges that are going to rise in any relationship, to let Him heal our minds. It is in this way that the Holy Spirit transforms the special relationship into a holy relationship. If we keep our guilt they never develop into real relationships, but if we give the guilt to the Holy Spirit for purification, we can know what relationships are meant to be.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 1. 12-12-16

X. Release from Guilt, P 1

1 You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of pain where it is not. The doubtful service of such displacement is to hide the real source of guilt, and keep from your awareness the full perception that it is insane. Displacement always is maintained by the illusion that the source of guilt, from which attention is diverted, must be true; and must be fearful, or you would not have displaced the guilt onto what you believed to be less fearful. You are therefore willing to look upon all kinds of “sources,” provided they are not the deeper source to which they bear no real relationship at all.

Journal
The entire purpose of A Course in Miracles is to convince us that we have nothing to fear and no reason to be guilty. Everything he tells us leads us to this conclusion. It is painful to live in fear and guilt. It disrupts our relationships and drives us to build defenses and to attack aspects of our selves. It drives some fully insane and others to suicide. For most of us we are simply left in uncertainty and doubt; we suffer and then we die. And it is completely wrong, completely untrue.

Up to now, our solution to fear and guilt has been to displace it. We try to throw it out of our mind and it appears as stories in our lives. I hear many of them from students and friends. My son is hurting himself. My daughter is marrying a tyrant. My boss is going to fire me so he can put his friend in my place and I will lose my home. I was diagnosed with Stage 3 lung cancer.
There are so many fearful stories within the mind and all of them are simply representations of the completely unnecessary fear and guilt of abandoning God.

It seems like salvation to us, this displacement. It feels terrifying to facing the fear and guilt within ourselves, so we make up images that express the fear and guilt and then we project them outward where we can pretend that they have nothing to do with us. Yes, we suffer in the stories, but we are also victims, and victimization and suffering seems preferable to responsibility, preferable to facing the fear and guilt where it exists, in our own mind.

As long as we can convince ourselves that the fear is out there, then there is always the hope that we can help that errant child, that we will find another job, that the cancer will be cured, and then we will be saved. No more reason for fear… until the next story. And there will always be another story because we have never faced our imagined darkness. We have looked outward instead of inward.

We are like frightened children who believe that the monster is in the closet or under the bed, and are so convinced of this, that we cannot imagine actually looking there. We believe the monster is in us and we dare not look or we will know for sure that it is there and there will be no hope for us. There is a way out of this awful cycle of pain and suffering, though.

We can look with the Holy Spirit. We can show him our guilt and fear as we see it, and ask Him for another way to see. We can do this with confidence because that is His function and our way Home. He is a built in safe-guard, placed in our mind for that very reason, that someday we would be finished with this experiment in separation and would need a Guide to bring us Home.

In fact, that is exactly what we are doing here and now. The ego mind is frightened of this journey, but we are no longer entirely identified with the ego. We are ready for this and we can learn to make this journey in a way that is less stressful. I have discovered, myself, that it is possible to detach from the story and thus to realize that the story is a mechanism, not the truth, and so I am more able to see the lesson rather than fear the story itself.

I have also discovered that if I give the mistaken thoughts to the Holy Spirit and just let Him heal me, I go through this without distress. However, if I call on Him and then try to figure out what to do and what it means, then it is much more difficult. Complete surrender is best in my experience. Surrender and trust are my bywords these days. I give it to the Holy Spirit and then I walk away, absolutely certain that my help and my struggle are not needed and that I know I am being answered.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, C 13: IX. The Cloud of Guilt, P 8. 12-9-16

IX. The Cloud of Guilt, P 7

8 Do not be afraid to look within. The ego tells you all is black with guilt within you, and bids you not to look. Instead, it bids you look upon your brothers, and see the guilt in them. Yet this you cannot do without remaining blind. For those who see their brothers in the dark, and guilty in the dark in which they shroud them, are too afraid to look upon the light within. Within you is not what you believe is there, and what you put your faith in. Within you is the holy sign of perfect faith your Father has in you. He does not value you as you do. He knows Himself, and knows the truth in you. He knows there is no difference, for He knows not of differences. Can you see guilt where God knows there is perfect innocence? You can deny His knowledge, but you cannot change it. Look, then, upon the light He placed within you, and learn that what you feared was there has been replaced with love.

Journal
We are caught in a cycle of guilt and fear. At some point in our decision to experience separation, we experienced guilt and now we are convinced of that guilt. We are afraid to look within because we believe we will see only darkness. So instead, we look for the darkness in our brother, and because we want to find it there, we do. But that only makes us feel guiltier for having done so, and guilt continues to blind us to Reality. I suppose it is the way we set it up so that the illusion would be continuous.

It can’t be true, though, because God is not guilt and there is only God. He placed the Holy Spirit in us so that we would find our way out of this cycle of guilt and fear when we were ready. Now that we are ready, we have a decision to make. Do we still want to keep the illusion going? Do we want to continue watching these sad and awful stories? Do we want to continue to make everyone guilty so that we can avoid the inevitable and look within ourselves? There is a light within, placed there by God and this light shines on the truth that there is no guilt to be found. It has been replaced by love.

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Study of Text, C 13: IX. The Cloud of Guilt, P 7. 12-7-16

IX. The Cloud of Guilt, P 7

7 Guilt makes you blind, for while you see one spot of guilt within you, you will not see the light. And by projecting it the world seems dark, and shrouded in your guilt. You throw a dark veil over it, and cannot see it because you cannot look within. You are afraid of what you would see there, but it is not there. The thing you fear is gone. If you would look within you would see only the Atonement, shining in quiet and in peace upon the altar to your Father.

Journal
“Guilt makes you blind, for while you see one spot of guilt within you, you will not see the light.”

I don’t know how to feel about this. I have let go of guilt in a big way, letting go of a lot of guilty thoughts and ideas, letting go of the belief that guilt is real, knowing that when I do see guilt that I can let it go and knowing I want to let it go. And yet, I still am not completely free of guilt. I let it go much more easily than ever before, but it still pops up and I still have to go through a process even though it is a shorter process. I know that some day I will not see one spot of guilt within me, but when? That seems like a tall order.

I had two times today when I made someone guilty in my mind. I saw myself do it and I changed my mind. The first time someone close to me said something that seemed very unkind and I felt hurt by it. I reminded myself that no one can make me feel anything; only I do that. And yet, I still felt upset and I blamed this person for my upset. I asked for help, and what became clear to me is that the person I was seeing as guilty was only afraid.
Understanding her fear turned it around. I still had to talk to myself a few times during the day until finally I let it all go.

The second time it happened I heard something about a close friend that was upsetting to me. This time I got completely caught up in my own fear and forgot everything I know about letting go. This went on for a short, but really uncomfortable period of time. I saw that I was making guilty and I knew that I had to stop if I wanted peace. I couldn’t seem to make it work, though. Finally, I told Holy Spirit I needed His help with this. I didn’t know what to do.

Immediately, I realized that I was looking at a false image and that was all that was happening. I got this false image from ego when I asked the ego for help in interpreting the situation. I changed my mind and asked for the Holy Spirit’s help instead. There was a phone call and both of us were comforted. The whole idea of guilt seemed silly. Guilt doesn’t have the hold on me it used to but it is still in my mind. I really, really, want it gone.

Am I still afraid of looking within? Afraid of what I will see there? That can be the only reason that I would still project guilt onto others. I am willing to be healed, willing to know the truth that I am innocent and there is nothing within that is frightening. It is strange that I would still be holding onto to the fear of looking within, and that I would still cling to guilt. The only thing I know to do is to do what I did today. When guilt stories come into my awareness, I will let them be undone. If there is something else for me to do, I am willing to do that as well.

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