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Gentle Healing Journal Day 25 10-12-18

Journal for Day 25
LESSON 25

I do not know what anything is for.

The sentence that stands out to me in this lesson is that everything is in my own best interests. There was a time when I argued that point. How could being sexually abused as a child be in my own best interests? How could being sick and losing loved ones be in my own best interests? How could being impoverished be in my best interest?

I know now that the argument was not about any of those things, but rather that I simply did not want to give up the idea that I could finally discover a way to change the world so that it was kinder and gentler to me. I just hated the idea that not only was it impossible for me to change certain things but that on a different level, I was responsible for all that I experience. That desire to reject my responsibility extended to rejecting that I would have to change my thoughts if I wanted the world to be different, and it wasn’t going to happen tomorrow.

Once, I faced these objections and let them go, I looked at the fact that I judged all things according to how they affected my personal interests. I let that go, too as I realized that there is not actually a personal self in the sense that I perceived it. All things affect all aspects of the Sonship.

The Holy Spirit sees everything as either true or not true, whereas, the ego sees everything as either good or bad. So there was another area that I had to learn to see as the Holy Spirit sees. I had to learn that concepts are unimportant because nothing we think we know is absolute truth, it is only either helpful or not helpful.

As my mind has been purified a great deal, and as these ideas have been settled in my mind, it has become easy to see that everything is in my own best interests. If I care to use all situations for my awakening, I see that they are either helpful or not, true or not. I see that the personal story of Myron is really more of a parable than anything else and so it is a way to see what yet needs to be healed in the mind.

Yes, it does seem like there is a personal awakening going on here along with the awakening of the Sonship as a whole. And that is a good place to work from. It is the reason that Jesus tells us later that our only function is to accept the Atonement for ourselves. But as we each accept the Atonement, it is being accepted within the Consciousness of which we are all a part, and the Consciousness is being healed.

So as we each let go of the idea of personal interests and personal goals, and accept that our only goal is the peace of God, Awakening occurs on both levels. And everything that occurs within these interesting stories of life as a human brings us closer to that Awakening if that is our goal. If one is not yet ready to think about awakening, the life stories are helpful anyway as they bring each person closer to the day that they will be ready. There is, after all, a limit to how much pain we can withstand before we start looking for a better way. So everything really is in our best interests.

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Gentle Healing Journal Day 24 10-10-18

Journal for Day 24
LESSON 24
I do not perceive my own best interests.

I don’t perceive my own best interests. In order to accept what Jesus is telling me, I must accept the premise on which it is based. The reason I don’t perceive my own best interests is that I make that determination based on my perception of the situation and my perception is wrong.

Since I have experienced being completely wrong about what things mean, and have experienced this often, I am fully willing to accept that premise. Of course, the ego wants to hedge its bet and argue that sometimes I know what a thing means and what it is for. At one time, I would have been in agreement with ego, but I know better now. The one thing I know for sure is that I don’t want the ego directing my life.

If I am using my thinking mind, that is, the ego part of the mind, then I do not know anything. Here is what I have experienced. I am continually making decisions based either on what the thinking mind tells me or I am making decisions based on what comes through my holy mind. It can be something very simple, such as what I should do next.

Yesterday, I had some free time and I was trying to decide how to use it. If I was using the form of this lesson, here is what it would have looked like. In this situation involving this free time, I would like to get some more writing done, I would like to watch TV, I would like to meditate, I would like to read my current book, I would like to work on my 4th step.

I stood there in the middle of the room considering each possibility and discarding some of them for various reasons and having trouble coming to a conclusion. Then the thought came into my mind that I don’t have to decide with my thinking mind. I asked the question of my Inner Guide, what should I do next and I waited a moment. I felt to go to Walmart.

There were a couple of things I needed, but the reason seemed to be that I needed to get out of the house and I needed to walk. This came to me in snippets of thought, but it felt so right that I picked up my keys and went without giving it any thought. I am teaching myself to check in with Inner Guidance rather than making decisions with the ego mind. This particular decision may not seem earth shattering, but it is another opportunity to do this practice.

Here is one of the situations that I used this for this morning’s practice.
In this situation in which I am uneasy about what my lab work said, I would like the doctor to call me today and let me know, I would like the lab work to give a definitive answer to my problem, I would like the lab work to point to the solution, I would like the lab work to come back negative, I would like to get the surgery and get it over, I would like the surgery to correct the problem, I would like to be rid of the symptoms listed and other symptoms not listed, I would like to just let the problem be healed in the mind that thought it and keeps it going by continuing to think it.

But the thing is, I don’t perceive my own best interests in this situation. I know that I don’t, so wishing for anything is kind of silly. Even just wanting it to be over may not be in my own best interests. Sometimes we take a circuitous path to get to our destination because there are lessons to learn on the way. Don’t want to miss any of those lessons just to get things done and over. I think I am just going to allow, accept and trust and so let my mind return to peace.

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Gentle Healing Journal Day 23 10-9-18

Journal for Day 23
LESSON 23
I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts.

This is one of the lessons I live by, one that I consider essential to my awakening. To say that I give up attack thoughts is the same as saying that I will hold no grievances and that I will make no one guilty, including myself. It is the return to innocence and the return to peace. I woke up at 3:00 this morning and when I tried to go back to sleep, the ego mind thought this would be a good time to review all fears in my mind, the old ones I thought were gone as well as the recent ones.

Just because a fear thought shows up doesn’t mean I still believe it, but if it causes me distress, I am not done with it. Sometimes I can just look at an old thought and ignore it and sometimes I can see that it is still relevant to me today and I can change my mind about that. Last night, the thoughts were coming so fast and so hard that I couldn’t use my usual process.

What I did instead was to look for the opposite and true thought and I started trying to place my focus there. That helped but did not end the barrage of thoughts. I finally used a guided meditation and doing that helped to break the cycle of thinking. I went back to sleep and when I woke up the whole thing felt ridiculous to me.

There are some ideas in this lesson that I am paying attention to.

“The idea for today contains the only way out of fear that will ever succeed.”

This is why I treasure this lesson. It is the only way out of fear. Nothing else will work. It is simple and straightforward. I only need to be aware of what is an attack thought. It would seem that this is easy to spot but I realize that sometimes we don’t recognize a thought as being an attack. Jesus mentions some of them in the book, In the World but Not of It.

Judgments are attacks.
Examples of the ego’s judgments disguised as questions or observations:
He sure likes to eat! (implying he eats too much)
I don’t understand why she does that. (implying her behavior is abnormal or strange)
What is going on with that? (implying something is silly or stupid)
He’s being so nice today. (implying that is unusual)
I like these examples because it reminds me that there are many ways to attack without seeming to be doing that. It helps me to be honest in my vigilance.

“There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect.”

The world is an effect of our thoughts. As Jesus says, all thought produces form at some level. So thinking the change needs to occur in the world is like believing I need to fix my lipstick smudge by smoothing it out on the mirror. It won’t work. What can change the world is to change what caused it. This is why I am vigilant in my thinking. What am I thinking and what effect does this thinking cause. Change the cause and the effect automatically changes.

“The idea for today introduces the thought that you are not trapped in the world you see because its cause can be changed.“

We are never the victim of the world. We are the maker of the world and we can change what we made. Here is the way it is done.
Step 1. The cause must be identified. We must realize what it is that we believe that caused the effect we are seeing in the world.
Step 2. We must let that belief go. This can feel hard if we still think it has value. When we decide that we don’t know what is valuable but we do know that we want to be free of our hallucination, we gladly surrender to purification and we let that belief go, trusting it is the right thing to do to achieve our goal of freedom.
Step 3. Let it be replaced. This is the only step that is not our responsibility. I can help myself stay the course by focusing on the truth. What this does is it keeps me from falling back into the ego beliefs. But, “our images have already been replaced. By taking the first two steps, we will see that this is so.” What we seek is already within us, or put another way, Heaven is within.

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Gentle Healing Journal Day 22 10-8-18

Journal for Day 22
LESSON 22
What I see is a form of vengeance.

This lesson describes the horrific cycle of attack and defend and how it perpetuates the illusion. If I hold attack thoughts in my mind, then I will perceive a world as attacking me. If I let attack thoughts just slide through my mind without giving them power through my belief in them, I will perceive the world differently.

I used to be very confused about how to perceive sickness. When I got sick enough that going to the doctor was necessary, I felt guilty, like I was betraying Jesus by not accepting healing of the body through mind healing. I felt like a failure. So when I did go to the doctor it was as if he were the symbol of my failure and so I did what humans tend to do, I projected my guilt onto him, and so attacked him. Mostly in my mind, but I did attack.

And, of course, I didn’t receive the help I went for, or if I did, I didn’t feel good about it. I often thought that he was not a good doctor, when all along, I was not a good patient. Later, I matured in my understanding of the Course and I no longer felt wrong for going to the doctor. I just thought of the doctor as my partner in the healing of this body. I worked on healing my mind and he worked on healing my body, and I accepted both healings to the degree I was able.

What happened is that I started finding my way to doctors that I liked and appreciated, doctors who seemed always to have my best interests at heart and appeared to be very competent at their jobs. All of this occurred because I made a decision to disrupt the cycle of attack and defend. I no longer had any desire to take vengeance on myself for “seemingly” betraying Jesus with my sick body, and so I no longer experienced vengeance from the medical community in the form of poor or mediocre doctors.

This is the way all attack thoughts work. If we believe we are being attacked and that attack in return is justified, our life becomes a war zone with no peace in sight. It happens in relationships the same way. When I was married, I held my husband’s behavior against him and felt justified in defending myself.

The very fact that I thought I needed defense increased my belief in an unsafe relationship, and so of course I believed that more defense was needed. It was a crazy self-perpetuating cycle. Eventually, I had to ask for another way to see because even divorce did not relieve the distress. Deciding that I was done with vengeance and done with suffering, and deciding that I was willing to do whatever it took to be at peace is what broke that cycle.

What I think, I see
Here is how Regina starts her discourse on the cycle of seeing and believing.
It is simple: Mind decides an idea is valuable or meaningful, and through this decision that idea becomes manifest in some way. When it is manifest, it is experienced. If mind decides the experience has importance or meaning, it seems real. Once an idea is experienced as real, it is like a mesmerizing spell that mind ignorantly believes and the spell continues as real.

To wake up from this cycle, one must choose to step outside of the spell-continuance process. One may step out at the level of mental idea or one may step out at the level of manifest experience. Either way, the step out process is the same. One must see that the idea or experience is not meaningful. One must not give it value or importance. One must return to the constant spiritual practice of Self-inquiry and Self-watching.

Here is what I read in ACIM in Lesson 325. It is very similar, I think.
1 This is salvation’s keynote: What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want. From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as one’s own. ...

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Gentle Healing Journal Day 21 10-7-18

Journal for Day 21
LESSON 21
I am determined to see things differently.

“You will become increasingly aware that a slight twinge of annoyance is nothing but a veil drawn over intense fury.”

This is one of those statements in the Course that changed everything for me. Before this, I believed that there were degrees of anger. I still sometimes say that I am annoyed or irritated, but that desire to mitigate the rage is always followed by the awareness that I am kidding myself. Sometimes, I am blessed with the actual undisguised rage. It will just rise up in me and let me see it. It is a blessing because it takes me out of denial and I understand how destructive it is, and I become certain that I have no desire to keep it.

I thought I would have a hard time finding anger. I seldom get angry anymore, I thought. But Jesus said to “Remember that you do not really recognize what arouses anger in you, and nothing that you believe in this connection means anything.” As I opened myself to guidance in this, and became willing to see whatever needs to be seen, it became clear that I do have unacknowledged anger. Shoot, it even makes me angry that I have this work to do, that I had been fooling myself about this. But I am determined to see this differently.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Journal Day 20 10-3-18

Journal for Day 20
LESSON 20
I am determined to see.

“What you desire you will see. Such is the real law of cause and effect as it operates in the world.”

Absolutely everything I do as I practice A Course in Miracles, including this lesson, is to open my mind to what I really want and to decide to have it. This is so very simple and while it used to feel very hard at times, it now feels much easier. I might get bogged down in an ego story for a little while, but I have so many ways to bring me back to sanity that the insanity is brief for the most part.

I now recognize the ego and I know that the ego can be the cause of my distress or it can be the way out of my distress. It is up to me. If there is an ego thought in my mind, I can accept it as if I have no choice and suffer for believing it. Or I can deny what is clearly not true regardless of the apparent effects of that belief and watch everything change.

I recognize that I want to be happy and I want to be free. I used to be confused about that to the point that I didn’t recognize happiness or freedom. I believed that competitive little ego self of mine when it said that being right and winning was happiness. I believed it when it said that making decisions on my own was freedom.

I have so much more confidence in my ability to choose again what I want, and in the power of my thoughts to bring me joy as easily as it has brought me pain. I have much more confidence in myself as God created me than I used to. While it is not complete confidence, it is enough to sweep me forward on this path and make my way smoother and easier.

I don’t see today’s practice as a burden. I look forward to it because I am determined to see. I want to open my spiritual eye and see the world in a different light. I want never to close it to the truth again. In a moment of confusion yesterday, I asked for help in seeing and I received my answer. I am awakening, no doubt about it, and I am helping others to awaken.
I am a teacher of God. Whatever thoughts deny this can only be meaningless and of no interest to me. I am determined to see the truth.

PS: A couple of days ago I awoke to pain in my lower back. That is the illusion. The truth is that pain is not real. For these two days I have been thinking as if pain could be real, but as I read this lesson again, I am reminded that I am determined to see. I see that for whatever reason, I have projected an image of pain, and I see that I am now unwilling to believe in that image. Whether the pain disappears from my mind or not, I am free of the belief that it is now or ever has been real. Thank you, Holy Spirit.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Journal Day 19 10-2-18

Journal for Day 19
LESSON 19
I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.

With the very first thought that came to mind, I had two immediate and strong responses. The first was that this thought is creating effects and I am experiencing them. Is this something I want to sustain? Do I want these effects in my life? I already knew that my experiences come from my thoughts, but looking at the thoughts one at a time like this made this idea real in a different way.

I was aware of the emotional response to that thought and I could see what it was going to do to my life if I continued to believe it. The ego mind didn’t see a way out of believing it, but Spirit reminded me that it was just a thought. Thought has power only if I believe it and choose to keep it. I can just as easily accept the opposite thought as true. This is what I did.

The second response was the realization that this thought if believed would produce effects that would touch all of the Sonship. Jesus was right when he said it seems to carry with it an enormous sense of responsibility. That was exactly what it felt like to me. But, while it is a responsibility, it is also an opportunity.

When I notice a dark thought in my mind, I have a choice to make. I can keep that thought and continue to believe it, and thus empower it, or I can use this opportunity to enlighten not just my mind, but also our shared mind. This is my purpose, after all, and I can choose to be glad of it just as easily as choosing to feel burdened by it.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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