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Study of Text, C 15: V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 5. 1-18-18

V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 5
5 The Holy Spirit knows no one is special. Yet He also perceives that you have made special relationships, which He would purify and not let you destroy. However unholy the reason you made them may be, He can translate them into holiness by removing as much fear as you will let Him. You can place any relationship under His care and be sure that it will not result in pain, if you offer Him your willingness to have it serve no need but His. All the guilt in it arises from your use of it. All the love from His. Do not, then, be afraid to let go your imagined needs, which would destroy the relationship. Your only need is His.

Journal
There are a lot of little nuggets in this paragraph. The main point, of course, is that if left to our own devices we tend to destroy our relationships. However, if we will give them to the Holy Spirit, they will be transformed for us. But I noticed some important ideas in here that I want to look at.

The first thing I noticed is that the Holy Spirit knows that no one is special and at the same time, He perceives that we have made special relationships. I had to smile as I thought about this. It is like when my kids were little. Sometimes they would be afraid of something that was not really fearful. I knew there was nothing to be afraid of, but I still understood they believed in the fear, and so I responded lovingly and made them feel safe again.

We don’t know what to do with our relationships. We completely misunderstand them. We think that we need our child or partner, and this need becomes the driving force in the relationship. If the need is not met, the relationship is destroyed. The destruction is always the perception of a loss of love, sometimes temporary and sometimes permanent. A relationship given to the Holy Spirit is safe from this loss.

How does the Holy Spirit do this? He removes the fear from them. If we let Him. If we put our relationships under His care and let them serve His purpose, they will never result in pain. Here, Jesus says that all the guilt arises from our use of them. And this is another point he emphasizes; the fear he talks about comes from guilt.

We give our relationships the purpose of getting something we think we need and so we feel guilty. In another section, Jesus will explain this more thoroughly, but basically, we think we are taking from someone else what we don’t have and are offering something in return that is of lesser value. So we feel like we have cheated the other. (My words, not his.) This is the source of the guilt and guilt always causes fear.

The only thing holding us back from taking the Holy Spirit up on this incredible offer is the fear that we will not get our needs met. We really believe we need something from these others and we are afraid to let go of this idea. The solution is in the last two sentences of this paragraph. It says: Do not, then, be afraid to let go your imagined needs, which would destroy the relationship. Your only need is His.

We don’t have to be afraid to let go of our needs because they are imagined. They are like the monsters under the bed that children were so afraid of. They are no more real than that. The Holy Spirit knows what we really need and will supply it as long as we still believe in needs. When we turn our relationships over to the Holy Spirit, the only thing we give up is fear and guilt, and what we gain is love.

 

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Manual for Teachers: II.The Shift in Perception, P 2, 1-17-18

II. The Shift in Perception, P 2
2 The acceptance of sickness as a decision of the mind, for a purpose for which it would use the body, is the basis of healing. And this is so for healing in all forms. A patient decides that this is so, and he recovers. If he decides against recovery, he will not be healed. Who is the physician? Only the mind of the patient himself. The outcome is what he decides that it is. Special agents seem to be ministering to him, yet they but give form to his own choice. He chooses them in order to bring tangible form to his desires. And it is this they do, and nothing else. They are not actually needed at all. The patient could merely rise up without their aid and say, “I have no use for this.” There is no form of sickness that would not be cured at once.

Journal
What a clear and powerful paragraph this is! Sickness is a decision. The solution is to realize this one thing. If I am sick, I decided on sickness. We have already looked at some of the reasons we might decide on such a thing. Most of the reasons are unconscious (by choice) and are the result of thoughts and beliefs we hold and do not question. Guilt is the underlying cause of all sickness and is the source of those untrue beliefs in our mind.

What we decided on can be changed. All we do is change our mind. We know how to do this. We change our mind all the time. Do I want chocolate ice cream or vanilla? Chocolate. No, never mind, I want vanilla. No. I don’t want any ice cream now. See, how easy it is to change the mind? Don’t accept your ego’s belief that you can’t.

I had an interesting experience with this just the other day. I have been taking hormone replacements since I was in my 40’s and I am 68 now. I felt like I should stop so I did. Perhaps, I should have tapered off rather than just stopping suddenly, but I had some serious mood swings. I wondered what to do about this. I worried I would have to take some other medication to stabilize my emotions. And worried for a minute that it would be a serious and continuing problem.

Then I came to my senses. I remembered that this is a belief that I decided was true. I changed my mind. When I went to bed that night, I said aloud that I was done with that effect of the belief I had held. I told Holy Spirit I was ready for my mind to be healed of this and that when I woke up I knew I would be back to my happy normal. And that is exactly what happened. I woke up happy. When I go to bed at night, I look forward to another day of mind healing, another day of awakening. I love my life.

In this case, no agents were needed to achieve what I wanted to happen. I just decided what I wanted. This is not always the case. I have a couple of medications that I still take and seem to need. At least so far. And that is fine. These medications work only because I want the relief they bring and give them permission to do this for me. One day, maybe I won’t need them, but for now, I do. Even though I am taking something to achieve the purpose I gave them, it is still my mind that is the physician. No medicine can work unless that is my choice.

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Study of Text, C 15: V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 4. 1-16-18

V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 4
4 Because of guilt, all special relationships have elements of fear in them. This is why they shift and change so frequently. They are not based on changeless love alone. And love, where fear has entered, cannot be depended on because it is not perfect. In His function as interpreter of what you made, the Holy Spirit uses special relationships, which you have chosen to support the ego, as learning experiences that point to truth. Under His teaching, every relationship becomes a lesson in love.

Journal
Special relationships are never completely joyful. This is because there is guilt in them simply because they are special and thus not natural. Guilt triggers fear and so there is always that element as well. They shift and change because they are not based on pure love, and so they cannot be depended on.

We all have special relationships in our lives and all relationships begin as special. The good news is that the Holy Spirit will reinterpret them and they will be transformed into holy relationships if this is our desire. With the Holy Spirit’s guidance, we learn to use them as classrooms where they become lessons in love.

Here is what this looks like in a life. I have had a relationship with someone I love very much and this was a very special relationship. I cared about him more than I cared about others. I was part of his life and he was part of mine. Everything he did seemed to impact me in some way. Sometimes it was joyous and sometimes it was painful. He got both the credit and the blame. He seemed to be the cause of my feelings and so I thought I had no control over my reactions. I both celebrated him and resented him.

I studied A Course in Miracles and practiced what I studied. I learned to watch my thoughts and to do this with the Holy Spirit. He corrected them for me as I was ready, and my mind began to heal. Eventually, I become ready to give him my relationship. I did this a bit at a time, but finally, I surrendered it completely. I stopped caring who was right. I stopped defending myself. I stopped looking to him for my happiness.

The guilt began to fall away and, with it, the fear. The relationship stabilized as the love was more unconditional than it ever had been. The Holy Spirit had transformed that relationship from specialness to holiness. I still have moments of regression, but now that I see the difference between a holy relationship and a special one, I am highly motivated to ask for help.

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Manual for Teachers: II.The Shift in Perception, P 1. 1-15-18

II. The Shift in Perception, P 1
1 Healing must occur in exact proportion to which the valuelessness of sickness is recognized. One need but say, “There is no gain at all to me in this” and he is healed. But to say this, one first must recognize certain facts. First, it is obvious that decisions are of the mind, not of the body. If sickness is but a faulty problem-solving approach, it is a decision. And if it is a decision, it is the mind and not the body that makes it. The resistance to recognizing this is enormous, because the existence of the world as you perceive it depends on the body being the decision-maker. Terms like “instincts,” “reflexes” and the like represent attempts to endow the body with non-mental motivators. Actually, such terms merely state or describe the problem. They do not answer it.

Journal
True healing occurs at the level of the mind regardless of where we see the problem. We might feel sickness in our body, but that is an illusion. The sickness is in the mind, in the thoughts that we believe, and are then projected onto the body. Lesson 15 tells us that our thoughts are images we have made, and one of the images it makes is of illness.

So sickness is a decision, and therefore healing is a different decision, and decisions are made in the mind, not the body. Why would we make a decision for sickness? It must hold some value for us or we would not do so. Jesus talked in the last paragraph about our thinking process when it comes to sickness, and he says that it is an act of defiance and a way to protect our life, that is to keep the story going and the little self in place. It is also the way we punish us for our guilt.

Before I can change my mind about sickness, I must let go of these values I have placed on it. It is amazing how resistant we are to this. Sickness, suffering, and even death are a small price to pay for the delusions of a body and a separate will. But it is not impossible. Already, I feel these desires fall away.

I am not so determined to hold onto the idea that the body is the ruler of my little world as I once was. Nowadays, I never think of sickness as something that happens in the body. I absolutely know that it happens in the mind. So now a change in mind seems like a happy cure rather than a sacrifice.

Jesus says that the existence of the world as I perceive it depends on the body being the decision-maker. Well, OK, I am ready to perceive it differently and so I am not as resistant anymore. I far more readily give up my illnesses through devaluing them. “One need but say, “There is no gain at all to me in this” and he is healed.”

Yes, I see that this is true and as quickly as I can, I give the guilt in my mind to the Holy Spirit and I decide that there is no gain for me in being sick. It is amazing how fast I am free of the sickness. Sometimes right away, sometimes in much less time than I would have normally. I suppose it is all a matter of how wholehearted I am in my decision that the body is the decision maker.

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Study of Text, C 15: V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 3. 1-12-18

V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 3
3 You cannot love parts of reality and understand what love means. If you would love unlike to God, Who knows no special love, how can you understand it? To believe that special relationships, with special love, can offer you salvation is the belief that separation is salvation. For it is the complete equality of the Atonement in which salvation lies. How can you decide that special aspects of the Sonship can give you more than others? The past has taught you this. Yet the holy instant teaches you it is not so.

Journal
Typically, when Course students start realizing that they must give up the specialness in their relationships, they experience some fear, or a lot of fear, at the thought. We have given great value to this specialness. In fact, we think it is our salvation. What helps is to understand that it is not the love you are asked to forfeit; it is only the specialness, the neediness in the relationship that must go. It is the belief that this one person or these few people are essential to you and no one else can substitute for them. It is the belief that you cannot love another like you love these ones and that no one else can love you like they love you.

The problem is that we have muddled the love with the neediness to the degree that we can’t tell them apart and so we no longer know what love is, really. I say we because it is true for nearly all of us. For instance, when I was married, I loved my husband and that love was real and holy. But that was not the only thing the relationship represented for me. I also depended on him to provide for the family, at least his share of this responsibility. I expected him to be there for me when things were going wrong, if not to fix the problem, to at least give me a shoulder to cry on.

I expected him to love me alone, forsaking all others. I expected him to share his feelings and discuss his life choices with me. I wanted him to agree with me and take my side against others. I expected him to put the children and me first. I thought he would always make me feel special and needed and loved. There were a lot of needs and expectations in that relationship and I thought that getting these needs met by him meant he loved me. I also thought that if they weren’t met that I didn’t love him anymore. I don’t think I was a lot different in these beliefs than most other people are.

What I have come to understand through the study and practice of the Course is that none of those needs and expectations had anything to do with love. So if we take them away, and it is possible to do this, then what we have left is pure love, or at least as pure as it will ever be in the world. I think of that love and how it felt and it was wonderful. It was why I wanted to be with him in the first place, why it felt so good when I was with him. What if I loved everyone the way I loved him, loving without needs and expectations, just the pure love? Then when he wasn’t with me, I would not have suffered a sense of loss or loneliness because I would still feel that love.

I would feel it within from myself and so I would never be without it. I would have that love when I was with anyone else or when I thought of anyone at all. Can you imagine how you feel when you think of someone you love with all your heart and completely unconditionally, and then imagine feeling that way all the time no matter the circumstances? You could feel that love when alone or when with the butcher or the postman or a complete stranger. Life would be sublime. Could you imagine being unkind or unthinking to someone you loved completely? If everyone allowed that kind of love the world would be a reflection of Heaven. We would be living in the holy instant.

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Study of Text, C 15: V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 2. 1-10-18

V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 2
2 The past is the ego’s chief learning device, for it is in the past that you learned to define your own needs and acquire methods for meeting them on your own terms. We have said that to limit love to part of the Sonship is to bring guilt into your relationships, and thus make them unreal. If you seek to separate out certain aspects of the totality and look to them to meet your imagined needs, you are attempting to use separation to save you. How, then, could guilt not enter? For separation is the source of guilt, and to appeal to it for salvation is to believe you are alone. To be alone is to be guilty. For to experience yourself as alone is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to attack reality.

Journal
The past is the ego’s chief learning device. I easily see how that is true. As a child, probably as a baby, I learned that having my parent’s attention was vital and felt good. I learned that people in my family were more important than other people. I can remember my mom instructing us to take care of each other and stand up for each other, to defend family. I also learned what was required of me to keep my family’s loyalty and goodwill. Friends began to take on significance in my life as I entered school, and I learned that it was important to be part of a group. I learned what it takes to keep them loyal as well.

These things and more I learned as a child and they carried over into all my future relationships. Relationships became alliances and were more about survival than love; at least they were more about getting my needs met than about love. This is not to say that there was no love involved in the relationships. I love my children and I love my ex-husbands and my friends. But there was a strong need in these relationships and neediness is not love, and I have discovered that love becomes obscured by neediness.

All relationships defined by neediness are special. If someone loses their child, I feel compassion for them, but if I were to lose my child, I would feel like the world ended. I love lots of people, but I love my family more. This seems natural and normal to us because we pretty much all feel the same way. We all grew up learning the importance of family and that family is special and essential to us. If not, we transfer that need to others, friends or partners, our pets. But, special relationships are a source of guilt.

The reason this is so is that it is separation. I separate out the people in my life and designate which ones are most important to me and so which I love more. I learn which ones I need to meet my needs. I decide which ones matter the most. I decide which ones are against me, and therefore, are undeserving of my love. This separating out increases the guilt in my mind because it is an attack on God’s Wholeness. It makes me feel guilty and afraid even though I may not really know why or even that it is happening. It might just feel like low-level anxiety running in the background.

I have tried to love everyone the same and trying doesn’t seem to do the trick. I think that what I have to do is to notice when I don’t love someone and let the Holy Spirit work with my mind to heal it. I also think it helps a lot that I have reached a level of healing that allows me to desire love more than I ever have before. I am also more willing to love unconditionally and to love without exception. So my true desire to be the love I was created is coming forward. This desire is permission for the Holy Spirit to heal my mind.

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Manual for Teachers: 5.HOW IS HEALING ACCOMPLISHED? I.The Perceived Purpose of Sickness, P 1. 1-9-18

5. HOW IS HEALING ACCOMPLISHED?
1 Healing involves an understanding of what the illusion of sickness is for. Healing is impossible without this.

I. The Perceived Purpose of Sickness, P 1
1 Healing is accomplished the instant the sufferer no longer sees any value in pain. Who would choose suffering unless he thought it brought him something, and something of value to him? He must think it is a small price to pay for something of greater worth. For sickness is an election; a decision. It is the choice of weakness, in the mistaken conviction that it is strength. When this occurs, real strength is seen as threat and health as danger. Sickness is a method, conceived in madness, for placing God’s Son on his Father’s throne. God is seen as outside, fierce and powerful, eager to keep all power for Himself. Only by His death can He be conquered by His Son.

Journal
This is so crazy! Don’t get me wrong; I absolutely believe that this is what is happening. But it is crazy. First, I choose sickness, I decide for it. And if that is not crazy enough, the reasoning behind this choice proves insanity. I think I am in competition for the throne. I think that I need to depose my Creator and take His place. No wonder I am afraid of God.

And how am I going to do this? I am going to get sick, suffer and then die. Ha! Take that, God! And you can’t stop me. My choice for sickness is now seen as strength that gets me what I want, and health as dangerous as it keeps me enslaved to God. I’m also going to bang my head on the floor and hold my breath until I turn blue or until you admit defeat and die, God. Jeez.

Well, I am not as insane as I used to be. I can see this and see the absurdity of it. I have suffered for my folly, and I want to stop. I have even gotten in touch with my love of God, though I occasionally let myself become aware of my fear of God. Still, I am beginning to heal mentally, and so I am interested in healing in all other ways including physically.

So I accept the fact that sickness is a choice I make. Until that fact is accepted, there is little I can do to turn this behavior around. I would still keep getting sick and thinking that it just happened to me, and how unfair it all is. I have had proof that sickness is a choice, lots of proof, and yet I still fall back on the idea that sickness has value. It is just an old way of thinking, a bad habit that I need to break.

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