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Study of Text, C 14: IX. The Reflection of Holiness, P 3. 6-15-17

IX. The Reflection of Holiness, P 3
3 Merely by being what it is, does truth release you from everything that it is not. The Atonement is so gentle you need but whisper to it, and all its power will rush to your assistance and support. You are not frail with God beside you. Yet without Him you are nothing. The Atonement offers you God. The gift that you refused is held by Him in you. The Holy Spirit holds it there for you. God has not left His altar, though His worshippers placed other gods upon it. The temple still is holy, for the Presence that dwells within it is Holiness.

Journal
The Atonement is the great Undoing, the plan for Salvation, God’s Answer. What stands out to me in this paragraph is that the Atonement offers me God. I had to sit with that thought for awhile, and just let the tears flow. The Atonement is for me, it’s power rushes in at my whispered call, and it offers me God. I am humbled at God’s gift.

How do I call for the Atonement? I see that I am confused and I want to be healed, and I am answered. I sometimes express my desire for help more strongly and I say that I accept the Atonement in a difficult situation. I say that I want correction, I ask that my mind be healed, I just call out for help, however, I express my desire for the Atonement, I am answered. All the power of the Atonement is given me.

I am OK. I am safe. I dream of challenges, of pain and of suffering, and even of death, but God has not been overpowered by my fantasies. He remains on His altar, unaffected by the idols I place there. I am holy because I am His temple and where He dwells is holy. No matter what is going on in my story, this is His promise; I remain as He created me.

I know all this is true because I have put it to the test. I have called on the Atonement and I have been answered. Sometimes I accept the answer immediately and whole-heartedly. Sometimes I have asked and then defended against the answer, but it waits patiently for my acceptance. I struggle with the fear and guilt that keeps me imprisoned in my misery, but always, in the end, I turn to His Answer, and it is always there.

I have wondered many times why it feels so hard sometimes to simply accept the Atonement. I have decided that it is my grim determination to have a special identity that causes all my suffering. I could simply call for help to wake up and be answered, but I don’t, at least I don’t accept help right away.

I “forget” that I have this help, and I “forget” that I have the power of God at my disposal. I forget because I don’t want to remember. But I am changing my mind about that. Each time I overcome the ego desire to exist apart, I am stronger in my resolve to awaken. This, too, is His answer to my call for support and assistance. I am so grateful.

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Study of Text, C 14: IX. The Reflection of Holiness, P 2. 6-14-17

Two upcoming events: I am presenting an afternoon workshop in New Orleans Unity Church this coming Saturday, 1:00-5:30. July 14-16, I will be presenting a three-day workshop in Portland OR. If you are interested in details of either workshop, let me know.

IX. The Reflection of Holiness, P 2
2 Bringing the ego to God is but to bring error to truth, where it stands corrected because it is the opposite of what it meets. It is undone because the contradiction can no longer stand. How long can contradiction stand when its impossible nature is clearly revealed? What disappears in light is not attacked. It merely vanishes because it is not true. Different realities are meaningless, for reality must be one. It cannot change with time or mood or chance. Its changelessness is what makes it real. This cannot be undone. Undoing is for unreality. And this reality will do for you.


Journal
Reading this paragraph, I immediately compared what Jesus is saying to my experience of bringing my thoughts to the Holy Spirit. When I look at my thinking with Him, the Holy Spirit does not attack it. As we look together, the feeling the ego thought evoked simply goes away. For instance, when I was feeling stressed by my concern for a friend, I asked Holy Spirit to look at it with me.

As I sat there in silence for a few minutes, I remembered that I don’t have any way of judging this situation with my friend. I don’t know what he is trying to undo. I don’t know what he is gaining from this experience. I don’t have enough information to judge on my own. So I asked the Holy Spirit to judge with me, rather than depending on my ego mind to do it.

I felt the anxiety melting away as peace took its place. The belief that my friend is vulnerable and weak could not stand up to the truth that he is as God created Him. How could I doubt the Son of God? I remembered that my friend is not this story he is experiencing and that he is safe in God as are we all. I felt my trust in him returning; I felt my trust in us all returning.

It is really very simple. I bring a thought of anger to the Holy Spirit where it meets love and the anger simply dissolves in the face of this ultimate truth. I bring fear and it is met by love and the fear fades away. I bring uncertainty and doubt to the Holy Spirit, and the certainty of love is so powerful that doubt cannot continue in the truth’s holy presence. Truth doesn’t defend itself, in fact, it does nothing except to exist, and since there is only one reality, what is not truth does not exist. When what is not true is brought to that reality, it becomes obvious that it is not real.

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Study of Text, C 14: IX. The Reflection of Holiness, P 1. 6-12-17

IX. The Reflection of Holiness, P 1
1 The Atonement does not make holy. You were created holy. It merely brings unholiness to holiness; or what you made to what you are. Bringing illusion to truth, or the ego to God, is the Holy Spirit’s only function. Keep not your making from your Father, for hiding it has cost you knowledge of Him and of yourself. The knowledge is safe, but where is your safety apart from it? The making of time to take the place of timelessness lay in the decision to be not as you are. Thus truth was made past, and the present was dedicated to illusion. And the past, too, was changed and interposed between what always was and now. The past that you remember never was, and represents only the denial of what always was.

Journal
The Atonement is simple. We bring what we made to God. His Light will shine away the darkness. This is the Holy Spirit’s only function. He will not fail in it. We must not hide our dark thoughts, or hold any back. When we do this, the cost is knowledge of God and ourselves. What did we make? We made the whole world and our separate self-identity. Why would we want to keep something we made away from God? We are ashamed, afraid, and we value it.

When we understand that everything is an idea, we see how simple it is to bring what we made to God. We thought up the separation idea and now we bring the separation thoughts to the Holy Spirit and He corrects them. We are God’s Son, free of all limits. That means we are free to make anything we want, so we have nothing to be ashamed of. God is pure Love and only Love, therefore we have nothing to fear. God only loves us because there is nothing but love in God.

Do we still value our world and our identity? Perhaps so, but when examined closely, we can see that we valued falsely. There is nothing in the world that lasts. Even the very planet we live on is going to end. Our relationships, no matter how sweet, contain elements of fear and guilt, and inevitably, we lose those we love. Love itself is twisted and soured because, as we understand it, it is not whole, not unconditional and universal.

Our self-identity is unsatisfying. No matter how we try to perfect our bodies and our personalities, we are fighting a losing battle. The body never reaches the perfection we desire. In the end, it gets old and dies, that is, if we are lucky. It gets sick and dies sometimes, and sometimes long before it is old. As for our personalities, we seem to be stuck with pre-programming and can only try to improve upon it.

The world itself is chaotic and unpredictable. Wars and man’s inhumanity to man seems to know no bounds. Natural disasters occur and there is nothing to do to prepare for or prevent many of them. Recovery is the best we can hope for. Remind me again why it is that we think we need to defend the world we made and the separate self we treasure so dearly?

Even in the little world of my life, there is competition and therefore war. There are suffering and death. I planted a small garden this year and it is growing very well. But I am in competition for the vegetables growing there. I compete with the bugs, with fungus and with critters who share my yard, the squirrels, and birds. I try to find repellents rather than poisons, but it is a constant battleground in my garden. Hardly paradise, is it?

There is something else beyond what we made, something pure and beautiful, and completely dependable. In the real world, there is no sickness, no loss, no suffering, or death. In God, there is life everlasting, perfection, and wholeness. There is love, pure and eternal. It is all ours, our Eden. We are divine beings, creations of Love.

We have nothing to fear from God, and nothing of value to hold onto here. We can take our place in Heaven simply by desiring to do so, and we know the simple steps that extricate us from our illusions. Let us choose salvation today by noticing the thoughts that keep the illusion in place, and bringing those thoughts to God. This is how we forgive and this is how we save the world from what we made of it. When this work is done the world will disappear as we find ourselves in eternal bliss within God.

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Study of Text, C 14: VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 5. 6-9-17

The Holy Meeting Place, P 4
5 The link with which the Father joins Himself to those He gives the power to create can never be dissolved. Heaven itself is union with all of creation, and with its one Creator. And Heaven remains the Will of God for you. Lay no gifts other than this upon your altars, for nothing can coexist with it. Here your little offerings are brought together with the gift of God, and only what is worthy of the Father will be accepted by the Son, for whom it is intended. To whom God gives Himself, He is given. Your little gifts will vanish on the altar, where He has placed His Own.

Journal

A strange thing happened when I read this. I had a clear thought that I am in union with God and all creation and that I create through the power given me by God. I am a creator as God is a Creator. I don’t know, this was meaningful to me in a way that has never happened before. I saw the whole world fall away and everything that I think I am went with it and it scared me.

It all happened in a nanosecond, and I was surprised by it. I guess the biggest surprise was that I felt fear at the thought. That was, of course, the ego self that had the fear reaction. It prefers to think of itself as small and inadequate.  It is afraid of the idea of that kind of power. That part of the mind has reason to fear power.

Look how much suffering has occurred with the misuse of power, eons of suffering, a whole world of suffering. The ego believes it is better to stay small than to take responsibility for what has been done, and far better to stay small than to assume responsibility for its own power. Safer, it thinks, to deny it is doing anything at all. Fortunately, I know too much to bury my head in the sand anymore, and while there is fear, there is also acceptance. Evidently, there is that bit of conflicting desires, still, but not forever.

How does the ego mind manage to stay so deeply in denial and why do I allow it? Well, the why is clear. I am afraid of what has been done in the name of exploration, of discovery, of innocent curiosity. The answer to this is that nothing has actually been done, and I am both innocent and safe. I am slowly coming around to this truth, but obviously, I still do not entirely believe that my dream is not reality.

The first part of that question, how do I do it, how do I keep the illusion going, is also clear to me. Instead of accepting God’s gift of union and creation, which scare me, I accept the ego’s gifts of self-identity. I tell myself it is a gift of great value and I spend lifetime after lifetime trying to make those gifts more valuable through improving them and adding to them.

In this life story, I am mother and grandmother. I have been a successful worker and wage earner. I am teacher and preacher and author. I am respected and appreciated. I have spent a lifetime developing these gifts, improving on them and convincing myself they matter. Am I supposed to just throw this all away now that I have achieved so much I was trying for? Could it be I have spent lifetime after lifetime valuing what has no value?

Everything that is part of how I describe myself or think of myself is a gift of ego to take the place of my true identity. Here is what I know about my identity as taught me by Jesus. I am spirit. I am eternal. I am invulnerable. I am divine. I am part of God, in God, like God. I am a creator as God is a creator. I am pure love. My mind is so vast that it holds the universe. I am fearless. I am whole, complete and unassailable. I am beautiful. I am holy. None of this is questionable and it is true for eternity. So which do I want to identify with, the ego gifts I have been offered, or the truth of what I am?

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Study of Text, C 14: VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 4. 6-7-17

VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 4
4 There is no substitute for truth. And truth will make this plain to you as you are brought into the place where you must meet with truth. And there you must be led, through gentle understanding which can lead you nowhere else. Where God is, there are you. Such is the truth. Nothing can change the knowledge, given you by God, into unknowingness. Everything God created knows its Creator. For this is how creation is accomplished by the Creator and by His creations. In the holy meeting place are joined the Father and His creations, and the creations of His Son with Them together. There is one link that joins Them all together, holding Them in the oneness out of which creation happens.

Journal
Where is this holy meeting place where I remember the knowledge given me by God, and where I meet with God and His creations, and the Son’s creations? Where is this I meet and see that we are joined together as one? This can only be in the mind. I am mind, and I can be no other place so it must be possible for me to reach this holy meeting place. How could it not, if the place is in me?

Lesson 158 tells us this.

What has been given you? The knowledge that you are a mind, in Mind and purely mind, sinless forever, wholly unafraid, because you were created out of love. Nor have you left your Source, remaining as you were created. This was given you as knowledge which you cannot lose. It was given as well to every living thing, for by that knowledge only does it live.

It also tells us that this is an experience and cannot be learned or taught. It is given us, and here in the Text, Jesus is telling us that we can reach this experience. Lesson 158 goes on to tell us that there is something we can learn and that is Christ Vision. We learn Christ Vision as we give up our grievances.

So I do this. I release all grievances as I become aware of them. I clear the way to knowledge. It is there, and must be there, but I remain unaware of it until I have done my part. Once I make the decision to release my grievances, I sit in silence and allow healing to occur in my mind, and I wait for the experience of joining to be revealed to me.

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Study of Text, C 14: VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 3. 6-6-17

VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 3
3 Let your mind wander not through darkened corridors, away from light’s center. You and your brother may choose to lead yourselves astray, but you can be brought together only by the Guide appointed for you. He will surely lead you to where God and His Son await your recognition. They are joined in giving you the gift of oneness, before which all separation vanishes. Unite with what you are. You cannot join with anything except reality. God’s glory and His Son’s belong to you in truth. They have no opposite, and nothing else can you bestow upon yourself.

Journal
I want to return to the recognition of my Self, to awaken to my Oneness with God. Jesus is telling me three things in this paragraph to help me do this. He indicates that it is done in union with my brothers because the Son of God is all of us together. So I know that it is very important that I give up all grievances. Obviously, holding grievances will prevent me from returning to my Self because they prevent me from being in union with my One Whole Self.

A second thing he tells me is that I must not let my mind wander into the darkness, away from the light. I do this when I judge and believe in guilt, which of course, leads to grievances. In fact, what I am starting to notice is that Jesus talks to us about judgment, guilt, fear, anger, hatred, jealousy, grievances and all the ego effects, but really, they are all the same thing.

I can use the word guilt, and within that idea are all the other effects of listening to ego. I believe in guilt, which makes me afraid. I judge others and this makes me feel guilty and thus afraid. I am angry with someone and this triggers guilt, which leads to fear. It is all the same. Jesus uses the word forgiveness and it is the same as healing, accepting the Atonement, seeing it differently, and undoing. In fact, the longer I study A Course in Miracles, the simpler it becomes.

I think I am separate from God and from my brothers, and because I believe this, it appears to be true to me. I suffer the consequences of this belief until I am ready to awaken from it. Then I am led to the experiences that show me something else is available and that I want it. I see that my life is not at random and that I have done this to myself, but that it can be undone.

This leads to the third thing that Jesus is telling us in this paragraph. The way I return to the awareness of my Divinity and my Unity is through the Holy Spirit. As I look with the Holy Spirit rather than the ego mind, all is forgiven, I am healed, it is undone, and I see it differently. It is done for me, and the only way I get there is through Him. I dreamed of a different existence and then I wake up to what remains untouched and unaffected by my illusions. This is, literally, all that is happening.

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Study of Text, C 14: VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 2. 6-5-17

VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 2
2 He shares it still, for you. Everything that promises otherwise, great or small, however much or little valued, He will replace with the one promise given unto Him to lay upon the altar to your Father and His Son. No altar stands to God without His Son. And nothing brought there that is not equally worthy of Both, but will be replaced by gifts wholly acceptable to Father and to Son. Can you offer guilt to God? You cannot, then, offer it to His Son. For they are not apart, and gifts to One are offered to the Other. You know not God because you know not this. And yet you do know God and also this. All this is safe within you, where the Holy Spirit shines. He shines not in division, but in the meeting place where God, united with His Son, speaks to His Son through Him. Communication between what cannot be divided cannot cease. The holy meeting place of the un-separated Father and His Son lies in the Holy Spirit and in you. All interference in the communication that God Himself wills with His Son is quite impossible here. Unbroken and uninterrupted love flows constantly between the Father and the Son, as Both would have it be. And so it is.

Journal
My life as I experience it now is a dichotomy. I am a woman, a body, a personality; I am spirit. I am guilty; I am innocent. I love, I hate. I do not know what I am, and I know very well what I am. There is what I think of myself and then there is what is true about me. What I think about myself is mine alone and cannot be shared. What I think about myself I cannot offer to God.

But there is a place in me that is real, an altar where I meet my Brother and where I meet God. In this meeting place, there is no separation, no interference. There is unbroken and uninterrupted love flowing between Father and Son.  The Holy Spirit keeps this place within me. I can visit it in my meditation and sometimes in my dreams, but how do I stay there?

Jesus makes it clear that I cannot dwell in God alone. I must join with my brothers because there is no Self alone. Jesus simplifies this by telling me that I must not offer to my brothers what I would not offer to God. I cannot offer my brother resentment or anger, not fear and not jealousy because these are not offerings fit for God, and my brothers are in no way separate from God.

Another way to think of this is to realize that I cannot enter the Kingdom (God) if I attack His Son. Obviously, His Son is of His Kingdom and to attack Him is to attack God. Each time I see that I am offering my brother something unworthy of God I remember the stakes. Is guilt so important to me, so necessary to my sense of self that I am willing to forfeit Heaven in order to preserve guilt? Is guilt so important to me that I would renounce God rather than to relinquish it?

We are a Thought in the Mind of God, and thoughts leave not their source. There is no way we can be separated from God, but we can be lost to the memory of where we are and what we are. The pain of thinking we are separated from God is as hideous as being lost to God, thus this elaborate ego deception we maintain to hide from our loss.

Who could face such a thing day in and day out without going mad? And all along, we remain God’s holy child, safe and whole and perfect as He created us, only dreaming of self-destruction. Wake up! Wake up! Wake up to Reality. Remember that it is only in defenselessness that your safety lies. Stop striking out in fear and anger at your brothers and start reaching out in love and acceptance. This is the miracle that will awaken us all.

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