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Study of Text, C 14: II. The Happy Learner, P 5. 2-16-17

II. The Happy Learner, P 5

5 When you teach anyone that truth is true, you learn it with him. And so you learn that what seemed hardest was the easiest. Learn to be a happy learner. You will never learn how to make nothing everything. Yet see that this has been your goal, and recognize how foolish it has been. Be glad it is undone, for when you look at it in simple honesty, it is undone. I said before, “Be not content with nothing,” for you have believed that nothing could content you. It is not so.

Journal

Jesus is telling me that the world I see is nothing and not worth my effort. It will never content me. I can try to manipulate it and control it, learn enough to overcome it, and it is all wasted effort. This is not a sad or depressing thing to learn, it is good news! I can give up all that wasted effort and turn it toward what will actually bring me joy and peace.

Here is what I have learned so far about this. When the world seems to be the problem, I turn my attention to my mind. It is the mind that makes the world and so it is the mind that must be changed if I want the world to change. I used to be confused about this. I came to accept that the mind was the cause of all I see, but if all I see is an illusion, then why change anything? Why do I care? Why do I want to change anything in the world?

Now I see that changing the world is not my goal, but in changing my mind, the world seems to change as well. This only makes sense. If the world as I see it now is a reflection of the state of my mind, then the healed mind will show me a healed world. I will have a much happier dream and that is good. I am the Son of God. I am not meant to live in poverty, chaos and despair. I am meant for love, joy and peace.

As I change my mind about the world, as I begin to accept my true nature and release the separation thoughts, the world I see will witness to this change. I have seen this happen and I know it is true. It is like the world is a perfect mirror of my mind and so I look at it to see how I am doing. Does it still reflect a desire to attack and defend? Then there are thoughts in my mind that are not healed. Is the body in pain or sick? Then there are still beliefs that need to be undone.

Because the Sonship is one whole and indivisible creation, this transformation must be inclusive. I have come to believe that it is my function to save the world through saving myself. But salvation cannot occur if any are left out. It would be like saving the body but not including certain organs because I don’t find them worthy. The body will not function and so will not be saved. I see the body of Christ in the same way. It must all be included, no part left out or it will not be saved.

So this defines my function. This perfect mirror that I think of as my life and my world will allow me to know my own salvation in relationship to the salvation I offer all parts of the Sonship. Here is an example. When my ex-husband showed up in our life recently and in a way that was uncomfortable for us all, I felt resentful. I tried to avoid him. I tried not to think about the situation when I didn’t have to. My reaction to him was like cutting the heart out of the body and then wondering why it was no longer functioning.

In trying to cut this man out of our life, it was like I was trying to cut him out of the body of Christ. Then I was trying to act as if I was still whole and functioning when I was actually limping along, and feeling the effect of my foolishness. I lost the sense of love and joy and peace that is mine when I meet its conditions, and really, there is only one condition. I must love unconditionally and universally. Excluding someone from that love is not unconditional and universal love.

When I was tired of this miserable dream, I invited the Holy Spirit to heal my mind of the belief I needed to deny love to this one integral part of Self, or even that he needed to meet certain demands to receive welcome in my heart. I stopped thinking he was the problem and amputation was the answer. I stopped thinking I knew anything at all. Instead I welcomed him into my circle of love and I began to take him and the entire situation to the altar. There I allow my holiness to do its work without my input or my interference.

Will my world change because of this decision? It already has. I am at peace and that is my goal. Will the situation shift? Yes it will. I don’t know what that will look like, but I know it will be in the best interest of everyone concerned, because the Holy Spirit answers for all, not knowing us in parts. I can’t see how this will happen, but I don’t need to. I trust the process. I trust the Holy Spirit to know what I cannot know.

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Study of Text, C 14: II. The Happy Learner, P 4. 2-15-17

II. The Happy Learner, P 4

4 Like you, the Holy Spirit did not make truth. Like God, He knows it to be true. He brings the light of truth into the darkness, and lets it shine on you. And as it shines your brothers see it, and realizing that this light is not what you have made, they see in you more than you see. They will be happy learners of the lesson this light brings to them, because it teaches them release from nothing and from all the works of nothing. The heavy chains that seem to bind them to despair they do not see as nothing, until you bring the light to them. And then they see the chains have disappeared, and so they must have been nothing. And you will see it with them. Because you taught them gladness and release, they will become your teachers in release and gladness.

Journal

I know this is true but I asked Holy Spirit how to talk about it. I asked for an example and He reminded me of a time when I was dating a man I was going to later marry. He and I had a very serious disagreement on the way to play volleyball with friends. When we got there I was still reeling from our argument and I couldn’t get into the game.

The couple who lived at the house where the game was taking place were not playing either and when I went in to use their restroom, we introduced ourselves and struck up a conversation. It was a bit of a struggle for me to be friendly at first because I was still upset, but the conversation somehow turned to my study of A Course in Miracles.

This was not something I talked about casually and I cannot remember how it even came into the conversation, but they were interested and so we talked about it for a good while. They began to study it themselves, and though they soon moved away and I did not have the pleasure of joining them in the study, I felt very blessed to have been given the opportunity to introduce them to this path.

This was early in my own study and I was not accustomed to this. It made a strong impression on me, though. For one thing, once we started talking about the Course, all upset fell away as if it was nothing. Up to that point, the argument seemed like the only thing that mattered, and suddenly it lost its hold on me.

Another reason it was important is that I saw how uplifting it is to share what I am given, and how the act of sharing automatically brought me out of my ego thinking and into Spirit’s influence. I was teaching them what I had been taught, and in the process, I was learning it again, having what I knew reinforced in my mind. This is something that would be repeated many times until I knew without doubt that what I teach, I learn.

And I have often, since then, had the experience of being uplifted as I allowed the Holy Spirit to work through me. This would happen even when, or maybe especially when, the ego mind was bringing me down. I would, sometimes reluctantly, step out of myself long enough for the Holy Spirit to help me remember that the ego is not myself. I would see this happen when the words simply came and they hit their mark, and this at a time when I could not seem to help myself, much less someone else. And suddenly we are both receiving the help we need.

“And you will see it with them. Because you taught them gladness and release, they will become your teachers in release and gladness.”

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Study of Text, C 14: II. The Happy Learner, P 3. 2-14-17

II. The Happy Learner, P 3

3 All this the Holy Spirit sees, and teaches, simply, that all this is not true. To those unhappy learners who would teach themselves nothing, and delude themselves into believing that it is not nothing, the Holy Spirit says, with steadfast quietness:

The truth is true. Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything beside it is not there. Let Me make the one distinction for you that you cannot make, but need to learn. Your faith in nothing is deceiving you. Offer your faith to Me, and I will place it gently in the holy place where it belongs. You will find no deception there, but only the simple truth. And you will love it because you will understand it.

Journal

There should be an asterisk or something beside this paragraph, some special statement that says, “Pay attention now, you are about to learn the secret to life eternal.” A Course in Miracles turns the illusion we think of as life right on its head. It pulls the rug from under us. And yet, it does it so gently that it takes awhile to truly sink in.

What we are remembering as we do this work is that truth is true and what we are experiencing here is not that! The truth is true and our present experience of life is not true. It is not real and it is not actually happening. He then tells us that we cannot on our own distinguish the truth from the experience, but that the Holy Spirit can do that for us, and we can learn from Him. All He needs is our faith in Him.

Jesus also reassures us that this will be a happy event. He says that where we are being taken is into our true mind and it is very holy and that it is there we will find the simple truth. He also says that we will love it because we will understand it. The Holy Spirit speaks the truth to us consistently and constantly, and sometimes we let ourselves hear it. As we listen more often, the mind is healed of its insanity.

In lesson 45, Jesus says this.

“You think with the Mind of God. Therefore you share your thoughts with Him, as He shares His with you. They are the same thoughts, because they are thought by the same Mind.”

I read this and all I can think is to ask Jesus, “What am I?” I cannot be anything I ever identified with in the past, at least in the past experience of this life. And yet, he tells us over and over how very holy we are, how powerful, how beautiful. He tells us that we are in the Mind of God and that God is in our mind, that we think with the same Mind. How can I read this without crying? I can’t. How can I know this is true without His help? I can’t. But with His help I can learn it.

In the past and sometimes even now I tell Him that I am a body in pain, that I am sad, that I feel beleaguered by all around me and the circumstances of this life. I tell Him I am afraid and oh so very guilty. He, in turn, understands I believe this but simply knows it is not true. He answers each fear, each mistaken belief with the same steadfast reminder that the truth is true and only the truth is true, and what I believe is not true. He keeps turning my attention to my holiness, to my glorious reality.

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Study of Text, C 14: II. The Happy Learner, P 2. 2-13-17

II. The Happy Learner, P 2

2 The Holy Spirit, seeing where you are but knowing you are elsewhere, begins His lesson in simplicity with the fundamental teaching that truth is true. This is the hardest lesson you will ever learn, and in the end the only one. Simplicity is very difficult for twisted minds. Consider all the distortions you have made of nothing; all the strange forms and feelings and actions and reactions that you have woven out of it. Nothing is so alien to you as the simple truth, and nothing are you less inclined to listen to. The contrast between what is true and what is not is perfectly apparent, yet you do not see it. The simple and the obvious are not apparent to those who would make palaces and royal robes of nothing, believing they are kings with golden crowns because of them.

Journal

What I used to believe every day of my life, and to a lesser degree still do. I am a body and am separate from other bodies. I have certain needs and goals and they are different from the needs and goals of others. There is a limit to what is available and I am in competition for that limited supply. I need, I need, I need, because I think I lack. I am small and vulnerable and very fragile. I am alone. I am going to suffer in my life, and my only hope is to suffer less. My life is dedicated to that purpose of less suffering. In the end, no matter what I do, I am going to die. God is to be cajoled and begged and manipulated into giving me what I want. God might say no and so God is to be hated and feared.

What I am learning now to be the truth. I am spirit. This body I use does not exist anywhere but in my mind. I am very holy because God is in my mind. There is absolutely nothing my holiness cannot do. I can believe anything I want to believe and while I believe it, it is true for me. If what I believe is not the truth I will suffer as if it is the truth. My mind is the most powerful force in the universe and absolutely decides my experience. Do I have a pain in my neck? If so it is because I saw some value in having that pain and decided on it. Being free of that pain is as simple as deciding I have no use for it. Everything in the world I see is there because I chose for it to be there and all that is missing is missing because I chose for it not to be there. I am one with all that is. There is nothing outside of me. There is no one and no thing that exists anywhere but in the mind. I love God and He loves me. This is the truth and only the truth is true.

Or put more simply: I am the Son of God, exactly as I was created and nothing has or could change that. Everything else does not exist.

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Study of Text, C 14: II. The Happy Learner, P 1. 2-9-17

II. The Happy Learner, P 1

1 The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner, in whom His mission can be happily accomplished. You who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that you are miserable and not happy. The Holy Spirit cannot teach without this contrast, for you believe that misery is happiness. This has so confused you that you have undertaken to learn to do what you can never do, believing that unless you learn it you will not be happy. You do not realize that the foundation on which this most peculiar learning goal depends means absolutely nothing. Yet it may still make sense to you. Have faith in nothing and you will find the “treasure” that you seek. Yet you will add another burden to your already burdened mind. You will believe that nothing is of value, and will value it. A little piece of glass, a speck of dust, a body or a war are one to you. For if you value one thing made of nothing, you have believed that nothing can be precious, and that you can learn how to make the untrue true.

Journal

The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner. That doesn’t sound too hard, and yet, Jesus says that we who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that we are miserable and not happy. So he is saying both that we are miserable and that we don’t even realize it. I had to think about that a bit. Is it true? Well, it is not as true as it used to be, for sure. But I can remember it being very true.

I can remember when I was a teenager that I was most happy when there was some drama or other going on in my life. I kinda got into that Myron as sad and abused image. I liked the attention and I found it a role I could play easily. So when I had the chance to play it up, I took full advantage of it and it made me weirdly happy.

I also remember when I was married the first time. The marriage was reaching its first (and pretty much last) challenge, and looking back I see that once again I liked the drama and feeling sorry for Myron. I wrote these long sad, pitiful entries into a journal. Later when I went back and read some of them I was actually embarrassed enough at my immaturity and ridiculous display that I threw the journal away. But at that time, my misery was something I valued and in that weird way it made me happy.

There were many other examples, but I eventually matured and stopped seeking happiness through misery. Well at least it got less blatant, and eventually, more subtle. So do I still do that? I guess I must because here I am, still dreaming of a world where misery is always right around the corner, seemingly waiting to surprise me with an attack. We know though that nothing is in our world without our consent, so I must be making myself miserable. Therefore I must be still confused about the difference between misery and happiness. Now that is beyond weird considering what I know now.

The good news is that I am now aware that there is a difference between misery and happiness. That is a good thing because the Holy Spirit needs that contrast to help me see differently. So I bring misery into my life now, but since I have had some mind healing I know what happiness feels like, and I don’t enjoy misery anymore, or at least I more quickly notice that I’m not happy. This contrast between misery and happiness has taught me to quickly return my mind to God. It has created a distaste for drama and for feeling mistreated, and especially for feeling like a victim.

Jesus is also telling us that we are still looking to the world to find value. We do this when we bring unhappiness into our life and then try to change the circumstances to make things better. In the interim period when I was still learning not to value misery, I still spent a lot of time trying to make my world nicer. I collected neat things. I was unhappy when I didn’t have a nice car. I fretted endlessly about money and things. Then when I started getting these things, I felt personal pride at their acquisition and since I thought I was personally responsible, I was miserable because I might not be able to keep them.

Then there is the spiritual ego that took pride in my progress on this path. But that was just as much a dead end as taking pride in acquiring things. I was never enough, never good enough, always just not there yet. I bemoaned my errors and lack of progress and though I didn’t realize it, this was the same behavior as I had in my early life. Poor Myron, she works so hard on her spiritual path and yet she just can’t quite make it. Failing was my misery, but also my happiness. It kept me in the world, kept my story going, and at the same time let me feel pious because I was such a dedicated seeker.

Now what I can see is that I still hold onto guilt and guilt is the cause of all misery. I know that guilt is not real and that I don’t have to keep it, and yet I do. So there must still be the thought that it has some value to me, even though I know that doesn’t make sense and I can hardly believe it is true of me. But here I am.

The difference now is that I am letting guilt and fear go. I am dedicated to this. I am very aware of the contrast between misery and true happiness. I have little patience for unhappiness and I act much more quickly now when I become confused about that. I will not continue to make the untrue true any longer than absolutely necessary, nor will I judge myself for the process I seem to be going through. This is real progress.

One more thought about this. I have been doing the holiness lessons and I love them. This time through, they are more helpful than ever before because I believe them more than ever before. So in one of the practices with them I noticed that I had a lot of pain in my knee. I must have hurt it somehow. I said that in this situation with the pain in my knee, there is nothing my holiness cannot do. I said that my holiness blesses this knee situation. I said that in this belief in pain and the desire for it, there is nothing my holiness cannot do.

Then I felt uneasy because nothing seemed to be happening, but I also know that Jesus is never wrong. So I stayed with it. What I realized yesterday is that the aching knee is of my own making and I make it to prove that the truth is not true and I better just stay where I am. Since the pain is an illusion, I can just disregard it. I kept the belief in my holiness to the forefront of my mind. Today, there is only a twinge in the knee. So strange that I must still talk myself out of misery. It must be that I still get confused and think that misery is happiness. But I also know this isn’t true.

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Study of Text, C 14: I. The Conditions of Learning, P 5. 2-7-17

I. The Conditions of Learning, P 5

5 The Holy Spirit, therefore, must begin His teaching by showing you what you can never learn. His message is not indirect, but He must introduce the simple truth into a thought system which has become so twisted and so complex you cannot see that it means nothing. He merely looks at its foundation and dismisses it. But you who cannot undo what you have made, nor escape the heavy burden of its dullness that lies upon your mind, cannot see through it. It deceives you, because you chose to deceive yourself. Those who choose to be deceived will merely attack direct approaches, because they seem to encroach upon deception and strike at it.

Journal

We probably started with a simple idea, something like, “I wonder what it would be like to not be Divine?” And as that idea unfolded it became the twisted and complex thought system that Jesus is talking about. He makes it clear that we chose this and that part of choosing it was to forget we chose it. He says that we remembered not to laugh.

In other words, if we did not choose to deliberately forget that we made this up, then we would not believe in it, but would laugh at it. We wanted the experience and to have the experience we had to suspend reality and forget it wasn’t real. That was a deliberate choice. But there is a failsafe in place, the Holy Spirit, which is in our minds waiting for the signal that we are ready to wake up from this dream.

I try to remember back before I found A Course in Miracles. All the stuff that happened in my life, no matter how crazy or how painful was just “life” as I had come to know it. I prayed for help with life, but it never occurred to me that I could pray for help to extricate myself from this life. Mostly, I just tried to get better at dealing with it.

Now I understand from A Course in Miracles that this thing I think of as living is not real. This experience I am having is not life, but a twisted dream of life. This happened as the Course taught me to recognize the ego in my mind, to see the contrast between choosing to listen to the ego and choosing to listen to the Holy Spirit.

Once we learn what the ego is and how we made it, then learn to contrast it with our true nature, we make a decision as to what we want. I have decided that I am ready to wake up from this dream, and so each time I recognize that I am making decisions with the ego I turn to the Holy Spirit instead. At my request, the Holy Spirit is healing my mind and returning me to my natural state as part of God.

The question we often ask is why, if we made the ego, we need help to undo it. The ego twists that question into if life was so great with God, why did we leave it. First, we did not choose to leave God, we just chose to have an interesting and different experience. We remain in God even while we dream of these stories of being outside God.

The reason we need help waking up is because of the decision we made to forget where the ego came from. It was the decision to remember not to laugh at the whole insane idea and to take it very seriously that keeps us from the clarity we need to undo the ego.

That is why we have the Holy Spirit Who is never confused. Jesus says that He merely looks at its foundation and dismisses it. (This is what he taught me to do. I choose to ignore the story and look at the lesson it has, and when I choose to disregard appearances and know the truth instead.)His perfect clarity allows Him to see the truth about us and being in our mind, we are able to see the truth about ourselves. We cannot learn this on our own, but we can choose to know it and the Holy Spirit will teach us what we want to know. Desire is everything.

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Study of Text, C 14: I. The Conditions of Learning, P 4. 2-6-17

I. The Conditions of Learning, P 4

4 Any direction that would lead you where the Holy Spirit leads you not, goes nowhere. Anything you deny that He knows to be true you have denied yourself, and He must therefore teach you not to deny it. Undoing is indirect, as doing is. You were created only to create, neither to see nor do. These are but indirect expressions of the will to live, which has been blocked by the capricious and unholy whim of death and murder that your Father does not share with you. You have set yourself the task of sharing what cannot be shared. And while you think it possible to learn to do this, you will not believe all that is possible to learn to do.

Journal
Jesus talks about direct and indirect expressions. Seeing and doing are indirect expressions of the will to live. That is a strange thought because seeing and doing are all we remember and all that seems to make up life. Even if someone is blind and so cannot see with the body’s eyes, they can perceive which is another way of seeing.

I see people and places and things and do stuff with them and there. I crave the things I see, to hold them and own them. I perceive what they all mean to me and my perception is different than yours and even mine is not stable. I can change my mind in a minute about what it means. Now I love it, now I hate it.

What I see, what it means, and what I do with it; that makes up my life as I know it. And yet, Jesus says that this is an indirect expression of the will to live. So there must be a direct expression. What could that be? Perhaps being rather than doing? But what would that look like? I cannot envision that.

Jesus says that I was created to create, not to see or do. Even that has little meaning to me. I can relate to making, but making is just more doing.  Jesus also says that what I deny, I deny myself. So I deny the ability to create and therefore I cannot create. Instead I try to create indirectly through making.

We made this world. Then within the world we make things, discover things, do things. All of this is indirect attempts at creating, and it leaves us empty because it denies us our heritage which is direct creation. We can and will regain what we have blocked. So let me shift my focus. Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will teach us not to deny it. This will be indirect, too.

He says that we must follow Holy Spirit rather than ego because ego will only take you to the indirect experience where we worship death rather than life. Here is what I see as I read this paragraph. When I place my focus on ego, I live a shadow life. It is a pale copy of Life. It is indirect living.

In this imitation of living I make rather than create, and I become something that dies rather than the eternal being that I am. I suffer in pain and sickness rather than existing in eternal bliss. I am meant to share all with all, but instead I set myself the impossible task of sharing what I made, that is, death and destruction.

And thus I have set myself up for failure and I teach myself I lack in a way that cannot be filled. Only the Holy Spirit can help me out of this conundrum where I made the unbelievable and then believed in it. I can depend on the Holy Spirit to do this. He will not fail me. I only need to turn to Him with a sincere desire to be shown.

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