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Study of Text, C 15: The Two Uses of Time, P 8, 9-18-17

I. The Two Uses of Time, P 8
8 The Holy Spirit would undo all of this now. Fear is not of the present, but only of the past and future, which do not exist. There is no fear in the present when each instant stands clear and separated from the past, without its shadow reaching out into the future. Each instant is a clean, untarnished birth, in which the Son of God emerges from the past into the present. And the present extends forever. It is so beautiful and so clean and free of guilt that nothing but happiness is there. No darkness is remembered, and immortality and joy are now.

Journal
I was putting it this to the test in my mind. I thought about my concern for my son as he is looking for a job and his money is running out. He is worried and I am concerned this will trigger depression for him. So I look at this concern from the perspective of what I have just read. Is it true that the fear I have for my son is a result of the past and future? In this moment is there anything to fear?

I see that this is true. In this moment he has plenty of money. In this moment he has nothing to be concerned about. He gets upset only when he thinks about the future. I get upset when I project my fears, based on the past, onto him. In actuality, right now nothing is happening and he is fine. He has not run out of money. Is he depressed or worried? Maybe. Probably. But my fear is that these feelings will lead to something worse. And that is just a perceived future, which does not exist.

How about pain? Suppose I have a headache. It hurts in the moment, right? Well, yes and no. I notice that my head hurts when I think about it. When I get distracted, I don’t feel pain. If I start to worry about the pain, start to be concerned that it is not going away, then the pain is worse, and fear enters my mind.

If I think about how I used to get really bad headaches and sometimes migraines that lasted for three days, then I could get afraid and the pain would be very apparent to me. But in any moment I may feel pain, but I notice that it is only disturbing to me when I project into the future. Otherwise, there is no fear.

I have also noticed that without fear, the headaches that used to go on for days, now seldom last long enough for me to get around to taking something for it. It will come and then I get busy and forget about it. Then maybe I notice it again and then it’s gone. I think I have to pay attention to it to sustain it. There is no fear involved in headaches for me now because they don’t seem entirely real to me.

When I had pain from dental surgery, it felt severe. I got completely involved in the fear. I remembered the pain from past surgeries and I anticipated the pain. I became afraid of it and afraid it would get worse and last longer. Then I suffered.

The pain itself was not nearly as bad as the fear of the future pain. Jesus says there is no pain, that pain is not real. There is no physical pain and no emotional pain. These are part of the dream of separation, the effect of guilt. Can I step out of my dark imaginings and into the light of the never-ending present moment? I think that each time I experience emotional or physical pain, I have the opportunity to practice letting my perception be corrected and this will bring me to that moment of freedom.

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Manual for Teachers Introduction, P 2- 9-17-17

Introduction, P 2
2 To teach is to demonstrate. There are only two thought systems, and you demonstrate that you believe one or the other is true all the time. From your demonstration others learn, and so do you. The question is not whether you will teach, for in that there is no choice. The purpose of the course might be said to provide you with a means of choosing what you want to teach on the basis of what you want to learn. You cannot give to someone else, but only to yourself, and this you learn through teaching. Teaching is but a call to witnesses to attest to what you believe. It is a method of conversion. This is not done by words alone. Any situation must be to you a chance to teach others what you are, and what they are to you. No more than that, but also never less.

Journal
There are several important points in this one paragraph. Here is what I get from it. I am always teaching what I am, and in the teaching, I am learning what I am. I teach in two ways, one from words and the other from demonstration. Sometimes, my life demonstrates that I am spirit expressing as a body, extending love. Sometimes, my life demonstrates that I believe I am a body, separate and different than other bodies, reinforcing the belief in separation with all its unfortunate effects.

Until my mind is clear, I will go back and forth with this. Sometimes, my words and my demonstration will not be in alignment. In my experience, I can talk the talk but if I don’t believe it, pretty soon what I do believe is expressed through me in some way and that is what I will actually teach.

Studying and practicing A Course in Miracles is how I went from teaching from the ego to teaching from Love. And the more I taught love, the less I believed in fear. Isn’t it perfect the way Jesus set this up? The truth is already in me so it is always possible to teach truth, and the more I teach it, the more I learn it. And everyone around me benefits and then they get in touch with their truth and they teach it and thus learn it and everyone around them benefits. Jesus really knows what he is doing.

There is one more thing that grabbed my attention. Jesus says that:  “Any situation must be to you a chance to teach others what you are, and what they are to you.” So this tells me that everything in my life is used for this purpose. I am reminded of the sentence from the previous paragraph that said teaching is a constant process.

These days I am very aware of this responsibility. Whatever I am doing, whatever seems to be going on in my life, I see it as a teaching/learning opportunity, and I do the best I can with it in that regard. So, I am teaching others what I am through my actions and words. I am also teaching myself what they are to me.

Are they my dear brothers, part of my own Whole Self, or am I teaching myself they are separate from me, unimportant, my competitors for whatever it is I think I need to be happy? The other day, I heard someone say that they wished the hurricane would go to Florida instead of toward them.

I was shocked that they thought others had nothing to do with them, that what happened to these people had no impact on them. I remember when I used to think this way when I was only interested in what happened to those in closest proximity to me. I had forgotten that most people still think this way.

What I know now is that everything that happens to everybody happens to me. Not necessarily to the character I play, but to me, to us, to our Self. Thus, the hurricane and all its effects is an opportunity for me to teach this. Where I can express my love through my physical effort, or through financial sharing, I do that.

Where I cannot express my love in those ways, I give my prayers and I remember who they are. They may be very distracted with the business of living, and so maybe what I do for them is to remember that this sad story is over long ago and they are right now safe in the arms of their loving Father. It is what I would want someone to do for me.

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Study of Text, C 15: The Two Uses of Time, P 7, 9-13-17

I. The Two Uses of Time, P 7
7 The Holy Spirit teaches thus: There is no hell. Hell is only what the ego has made of the present. The belief in hell is what prevents you from understanding the present, because you are afraid of it. The Holy Spirit leads as steadily to Heaven as the ego drives to hell. For the Holy Spirit, Who knows only the present, uses it to undo the fear by which the ego would make the present useless. There is no escape from fear in the ego’s use of time. For time, according to its teaching, is nothing but a teaching device for compounding guilt until it becomes all-encompassing, demanding vengeance forever.

Journal
There is no hell other than what the ego makes of the present. The ego uses the present to increase the belief in guilt and fear. There is a way out of this. As we begin to turn to the Holy Spirit for the truth, we learn to face guilt and fear and to recognize that neither one is real. Through consistent practice, this has happened for me.

When I feel anything except peace and happiness, I realize that I am letting the ego use time to compound guilt. I then cancel out what I have just learned from the ego and I ask the Holy Spirit for the truth. It is a simple process and it works to the degree that I am willing to accept the Holy Spirit’s interpretation over the ego’s interpretation.

Here is an example of how I used this process yesterday. I had an ice cream cone with my granddaughter yesterday and this morning I noticed a feeling of uneasiness about it. I knew that uneasiness was the ego encouraging me to feel guilty for eating ice cream.

I recognized the problem immediately because it is one that has been around for a long time. I have been at war with food for my entire adult life. I have been very conflicted in this area. I have a story that if I eat sugar I will get fat. I want the sugary food but I don’t want to get fat so it is an unending battle.

To make it worse, I eat the desert anyway and then feel guilty because I think I shouldn’t. This makes me feel like a failure because I am weak. And now I feel vulnerable because I seem to have no control and this scares me. So now the ego has this unholy trinity going, sin, guilt, and fear. I sinned because I made up a rule and didn’t follow it and now I am guilty of the sin, and I am afraid because I know that punishment is sure to follow and that punishment will be weight gain. My own private hell.

But now I don’t just accept this anymore. I noticed the feelings associated with this thinking, and I changed my mind. What happened is that I quickly realized I was not at peace and this means that I asked the ego what eating the ice cream means. As soon as I accepted the meaning the ego gave it, I would normally ask what the solution should be. The ego would then start telling me things I could do to prevent or undo the expected punishment of weight gain. Go to the gym, maybe, to work it off. Which would only cause more guilt because that wasn’t going to happen.

But now I seldom get to that place. I have been practicing the Rules for Decision for a while and it is automatic thinking for me to see the error and go immediately to the real solution. So I chose not to pay attention to the ego, and instead, I asked the Holy Spirit what the ice cream situation meant. Then I could ask a real question and get a real answer.

Generally, this is enough for me to undo the whole thing, but this time when I told the Holy Spirit I didn’t want those beliefs in my mind anymore, and that He could take them for me, I didn’t feel complete relief. So I asked Him what else I needed to know. The thought that came to me is that in the past, I have always failed to let go of the belief that ice cream was a sin, and I kept repeating the same behavior with the same results.

Ah! I realized that the ego was using this present time to keep me in guilt by telling me this is the one thing I cannot give to Holy Spirit and that my choice to give it up could not work. I decided not to believe the ego and so I asked Holy Spirit for an interpretation and a solution and the thought that came into my mind is that, of course, I can change my mind. Of course, I will give this to the Holy Spirit. There. That’s done!

The whole issue is a construct of ego beliefs that I never questioned. The ego said that I should lose weight for all sorts of reasons, all made up in the ego mind. The ego said that ice cream and carbs, in general, were the problem and that I must not eat them. The ego said that I was guilty when I did and that I absolutely would eat them, and then I would be punished.

The whole thing, all of it, is a lie. There is not one word of truth in it. It is just a collection of unquestioned beliefs designed to keep me in hell. There was a time when I decided that carbs were the way to go and that if I ate fats then I would gain weight and because that was my belief, that is what happened. Now carbs make me gain weight and I can eat all the fat I want without effect because that is my belief. See how insane this is? What we believe is true for us.

Why not believe that nothing I eat makes me gain weight excessively? Wouldn’t this be just as true for me? What would it cost me? Well, the whole world as I see it, for one. And I would have to be 100% responsible for everything if that were true. Maybe that is scarier than the alternative. How about this? What if I choose to be punished with weight gain from eating certain foods because it seems preferable to looking at the real source of the guilt? Maybe I think I am guilty in God’s eyes and I find the idea of being guilty in my own eyes as less frightening.

What I always want to remember is that nothing outside me can affect me so the problem must be in my mind. My body is not creative, it cannot create fat out of food regardless of the fact that we have taught ourselves otherwise. The body is a mirror. It only reflects back to us what we believe. Your mirror is not responsible for what you see in it and it cannot make you look different than you do. Same thing with the body. It is only a mirror of your mind.

So ice cream is not a culprit and neither is the body. I am not guilty and afraid of the ice cream or my body. They simply triggered guilt and fear that is already in me.  So the solution will be to change the way I think. I asked the Holy Spirit to remove the belief in fear and guilt from my mind, and there is nothing to be triggered by the ice cream or my body.

Does it matter, after all, if I feel a twinge of guilt when I eat ice cream? Only that in I have lost my peace, and the loss of peace is hell. And if I believe in hell, then hell is always there waiting for me to rediscover it and so I am not free. And now it is a little stronger in the shared mind and so the entire Sonship is experiencing a stronger attachment to guilt. So, yes, it does matter. I am grateful that this morning I peeled away another layer of guilt and fear. This is the Holy Spirit’s use of time. It is undoing the ego, and so undoing hell.

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Manual for Teachers, Introduction, P 1. 9-12-17

Introduction, P 1

1 The role of teaching and learning is actually reversed in the thinking of the world. The reversal is characteristic. It seems as if the teacher and the learner are separated, the teacher giving something to the learner rather than to himself. Further, the act of teaching is regarded as a special activity, in which one engages only a relatively small proportion of one’s time. The course, on the other hand, emphasizes that to teach is to learn, so that teacher and learner are the same. It also emphasizes that teaching is a constant process; it goes on every moment of the day, and continues into sleeping thoughts as well.

Journal
It is so typical that everything in the world that I think I understand I have backward. I used to think that I was afraid because something happened to me. Then, I learned I had it all turned around. Here is what was really going on. Something happened to me because I had fear in my mind. This fear is then projected outward where I would see its effects. Using what my eyes showed me I would convince myself that it just happened to me rather than acknowledging that I did it to myself. I know better now.

Jesus says I have had teaching and learning backward, too. I used to think that I knew something. Then I would teach that something to someone. Then I would stop teaching and go on my way, doing something else. But what actually happens is this. I teach something to someone and as I do so, I am learning what I teach. I noticed this is accelerated if I teach what is coming through me rather than using my thinking mind.

And when I am through teaching… oh, wait, I am never through teaching. I teach continuously. I cannot stop teaching and, therefore, I never stop learning. My only choice is what I teach. If I teach from love, I learn love, and if I teach from fear, that is what I learn. It never stops. Even while I sleep, I teach and learn. That’s why I ask the Holy Spirit to help me Awaken while I sleep.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, C 15: The Two Uses of Time, P 6, 9-11-17

I. The Two Uses of Time, P 6
6 How bleak and despairing is the ego’s use of time! And how terrifying! For underneath its fanatical insistence that the past and future be the same is hidden a far more insidious threat to peace. The ego does not advertise its final threat, for it would have its worshippers still believe that it can offer them escape. But the belief in guilt must lead to the belief in hell, and always does. The only way in which the ego allows the fear of hell to be experienced is to bring hell here, but always as a foretaste of the future. For no one who considers himself as deserving of hell can believe that punishment will end in peace.

Journal
We are being shown the two uses for time and the differences between the ego’s use of time and the Holy Spirit’s use of time could not be more apparent. The ego uses time to kill us without killing itself, and it does this by following us into death offering more guilt and punishment. No wonder I was so ready to give up the idea of hell. As soon as I found a spiritual teaching leading away from this belief, I got on that train.

It was a little harder for me to give up guilt. Ha ha. Let me rephrase that. It is the hardest thing I have ever done, actually. If it were easy, A Course in Miracles would be a very slim volume. Finally, however, I realized that guilt is hell and so if I want to give up hell altogether, the belief in guilt had to go. I’m still shedding some of that belief. Like the proverbial onion metaphor, I have peeled away a lot of it, and am near the core.

The ego tries to convince us that death is salvation. Since it plans to follow us into death it is ok with the ego if we die. I used to think that if I could just get through this life, I would die and then wake up. I don’t know what made me believe that. I suppose it is because I asked the ego what awakening was and that is what I was told. I understand now that it is here that we wake up and then we are in Heaven. No further travel needed.

That is the way the Holy Spirit has used time. I give Him my time and He helps me by removing the untrue thoughts in my mind, as I am ready to give them up. It used to be very crowded in there, full of useless junk, but now so much has been removed that I am seeing some light. I have begun to welcome all experience, even the ones that still feel painful, knowing that the Holy Spirit will use time wisely to undo that feeling for me. Heaven is here with me, right here in my mind. All I have to do is allow turn my awareness in that direction.

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Study of Text, C 15: The Two Uses of Time, P 5, 9-7-17

I. The Two Uses of Time, P 5
5 The ego teaches that Heaven is here and now because the future is hell. Even when it attacks so savagely that it tries to take the life of someone who thinks its is the only voice, it speaks of hell even to him. For it tells him hell is here as well, and bids him leap from hell into oblivion. The only time the ego allows anyone to look upon with equanimity is the past. And even there, its only value is that it is no more.

Journal
I was wondering how it is that the ego teaches that Heaven is here and now. I suppose that would be a special relationship when all is going well. Or maybe special talents could be considered a heavenly experience, a great singer or athlete, a successful artist or writer. Maybe having a great deal of money or stature within your world could make you feel like this was Heaven. As I am considering these possibilities, I am aware of how easily this kind of heavenly experience could turn into a hellish one. This is a typical ego gift, shifting and undependable.

I have experienced the ego’s attacks that could drive one to suicide or at least the wish for it to be over. And all of us here are moving inevitably toward death. This is when the ego switches tactics and tells us that this may have been Heaven for awhile, but now it is hell. It offers us heartbreaking loss, perhaps poverty or sickness. Without a doubt, it offers guilt and fear, sometimes to the point of debilitating mental illness. The only surcease that is offered is oblivion, which, I suppose, has an advantage over eternal punishment that is its alternative future.

Before I became aware that I could choose to listen to another Voice, I heard mostly ego, and thus suffered from depression. I was suicidal at times, and that doesn’t surprise me. I am only surprised that I was able to function at all, and that I chose to live. I still hear the ego encouraging death and oblivion sometimes, but now I know the Voice for God and I don’t pay a lot of attention to the ego’s voice. In fact, recognizing the ego for what it is, I find its attempts to entice me to death uninteresting.

The ego doesn’t seem to care if I focus on the past. Probably this is because the past doesn’t exist and so when my mind is on the past, it is on nothing. There is no threat to the ego while I am living in the past because that means I am not waking up to the present moment, the only time that exists. More and more, I realize that as long as I am lost in my story, I am living in the past. This is an old story, long over. I am just thinking about it, reliving it in my mind. What could that be but living in the past and this is where the ego would have me.

The ego’s use for time is depressing and unproductive. It has only one purpose for time and that is in keeping the separation idea going. It wants to preserve the stories we made up not heal the mind that thought them. This is why I stay connected to the Holy Spirit throughout the day. I am learning to hear His Voice rather than ego, to look at the stories as ways to awaken from the dream of separation rather than as problems to be overcome. We made time and the ego uses it to preserve what we made, but the Holy Spirit has a different use for time. He uses it to undo the idea of time, and return our awareness to eternity where we are.

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Study of Text, C 15: The Two Uses of Time, P 4, 9-5-17

I. The Two Uses of Time, P 4
4 The belief in hell is inescapable to those who identify with the ego. Their nightmares and their fears are all associated with it. The ego teaches that hell is in the future, for this is what all its teaching is directed to. Hell is its goal. For although the ego aims at death and dissolution as an end, it does not believe it. The goal of death, which it craves for you, leaves it unsatisfied. No one who follows the ego’s teaching is without the fear of death. Yet if death were thought of merely as an end to pain, would it be feared? We have seen this strange paradox in the ego’s thought system before, but never so clearly as here. For the ego must seem to keep fear from you to hold your allegiance. Yet it must engender fear in order to maintain itself. Again the ego tries, and all too frequently succeeds, in doing both, by using dissociation for holding its contradictory aims together so that they seem to be reconciled. The ego teaches thus: Death is the end as far as hope of Heaven goes. Yet because you and the ego cannot be separated, and because it cannot conceive of its own death, it will pursue you still, because guilt is eternal. Such is the ego’s version of immortality. And it is this the ego’s version of time supports.

Journal
Back in the day when I was Catholic, what I liked about the Church was that the rules were clear. I knew what was a sin and which ones would send me to hell, and all I had to do was to steer clear of those. And yet, I didn’t. I really bought into the whole Catholic theology and still, I could not avoid those mortal sins. So, what is the chance that I would go to Heaven when I died? I could always hope that I would die right after confession just to be safe, but otherwise, I was doomed.

If I managed to avoid all mortal sin, I still had all those venial sins that would send me to purgatory for some undecided length of time where I could hopefully work off my sins. The weirdest thing about this theology is that I believed it. This is typical of what the ego offers us. We will die, but even in death, we will be punished.

What I think is most important for me to realize is that the ego teaches that guilt is eternal. How very strange, but what else could we expect from this upside down world? We, the eternal beings God created, will die and then in death continue to suffer. And guilt, which is of the ego will be eternal. I think my daily mantra will be this. There is no guilt. I will say this to myself frequently, and I will use it to answer all problems.

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