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Gentle Healing Journal Lesson 109 3-12-19

LESSON 109
I rest in God.

“There is no suffering it cannot heal. There is no problem that it cannot solve. And no appearance but will turn to truth before the eyes of you who rest in God.”

Yesterday, I gave peace of mind and happiness. I specifically thought of my son and then I thought of others I love and saw the peace and happiness spreading further and further. Today, I rest in God and I call upon my son and all the others to draw them to their rest along with me.

“You will be faithful to your trust today, forgetting no one, bringing everyone into the boundless circle of your peace, the holy sanctuary where you rest. Open the temple doors and let them come from far across the world, and near as well; your distant brothers and your closest friends; bid them all enter here and rest with you.”

This is one of the most beautiful lessons and I feel my heart swell with joy at the thought, I feel a longing to take this rest for myself and for all my brothers. It calls to me so strongly. I must be one with everyone, not just those who are here with me, but those who passed and those who have not yet come. I must be connected to them because my efforts are a gift to them. We are all, each of us, a Thought of God and we rest within His Mind where we were born and where we remain.

As I sat in silence trying to sink below my thoughts, I realized that if I rest in God for five minutes, I could be free of these thoughts. There are no such thoughts in God. I would be free of any physical distress or distractions because there are no bodies in God. There would be no writing, no phone calls, no one to help, because nothing in God needs help.

There is no house to clean, no one to visit, no Christmas gifts to buy. There is only rest and in that rest is perfect peace. It is hard for me to imagine, but for five minutes I did my best to experience it. The little I succeeded was lovely. I look forward to the next five minute interval of resting in God.

Regina’s Tips

NTI Luke says, “Sickness must rest and be quiet. This is the way to health. Let your sickness rest.”

This is why we want to rest. When our attention is caught up in our mind’s conditioned thought habits, the neural pathways that are related to those habits are well worn and as slippery as water slides. When we rest from our habitual way of thinking, those same neural pathways begin to dry up. Later, we will experience this as the ability to pause and discern before going into a habitual way of reacting. Or a neural pathway may be completely healed through our rest, and we will notice that our happiness is unaffected by a situation that would have upset us before.

My Thoughts
I am continuing my practice of choosing happiness in the midst of life experiences regardless of what they seem to call for. I am also practicing loving what is, also regardless of what the world thinks is an appropriate response. I am surprised how quickly this became easy and how quickly it began to feel like the best response and to make sense to me.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Journal Lesson 108 3-7-19

LESSON 108
To give and to receive are one in truth.

“True light that makes true vision possible is not the light the body’s eyes behold. It is a state of mind that has become so unified that darkness cannot be perceived at all. And thus what is the same is seen as one, while what is not the same remains unnoticed, for it is not there.”

I appreciate the clarification of light as used in ACIM. It is not light you see with your eyes. It is a state of mind in which we perceive correctly. Jesus talks about unification in this lesson. I understand him to mean that our thought becomes unified so that instead of thinking that there are many beliefs at different levels, there is only one truth.

Of that which is not truth, he says we will not see it because it is not there. He also talks about the one Thought that is behind all things. We can speculate what he means, but I don’t think we can really know more about this. That which is of God cannot be known by the split mind, only a clearer perception of it.

He also tells us that vision being healed has power to heal and encourages us to prove this to ourselves. The best way to do this is with something with obvious and immediate results. Since to give is to receive, we are told to give what we want to receive. I like that he suggested that we can use one person to represent everyone because that helps me to focus.

I knew right away who I wanted to visualize receiving my gift. I used my son because he is experiencing a stressful time right now. I began by asking Jesus what gift I should offer and peace of mind came immediately followed by happiness. I liked those gifts because I want them for myself.

I have been practicing choosing happiness for several days now. Every time I think about something that seems to challenge my happiness, I remind myself that I have chosen to be happy. So, this morning I felt less than happy, not depressed, but clearly not happy and I didn’t have a clear problem to see differently. I was wondering about this when I started this lesson and now I have a focus to help me return to happiness so I am grateful.

I have also seen that in choosing happiness, I have unified my thinking, though I didn’t see it that way at the time. By that, I mean I choose happiness and doing so, I have chosen against anger, fear, guilt, all the ego effects that keep me from being happy. The end result is that I am at peace as long as I make happiness my function. I see why Jesus told me to use those two gifts in my practice.

“Say each one slowly and then pause a while, expecting to receive the gift you gave. And it will come to you in the amount in which you gave it. You will find you have exact return, for that is what you asked. It might be helpful, too, to think of one to whom to give your gifts. He represents the others, and through him you give to all.”

I did as instructed, giving the gift of peace of mind and happiness in expectation of receiving it in the amount in which you gave it. I had to let my thoughts be purified first, because as soon as I thought of my son being at peace, I also had the untrue thought that he could not be at peace with all the stress he is under. This is the kind of thinking that keeps us caught in the ego story.

I released that thinking to the Holy Spirit and returned my mind to the truth. I already knew from my own practice earlier this week that I can be happy regardless of what is happening in my life so I knew that my son could also be happy right now. I was sincere in my desire to give peace of mind and happiness to my son and so I received it in kind. I look forward to another day of happiness.

Regina’s Tips

Today’s lesson says, “One thought, completely unified, will serve to unify all thought.” That’s the power of the Loving All Method. It unifies everything so that there are no opposites. It brings about a “state of mind that has become so unified that darkness cannot be perceived at all.”
Here is the link to the Loving All Method for those of you who want to review it this week:

My Thoughts
It’s funny that I was very resistant to the Loving All Method at first, but since beginning the happiness lessons, I have seen the value in it and don’t understand why I ever resisted it. It is exactly as Regina says, it unifies everything so there are no opposites. We will always be happy if we reach a “state of mind that has become so unified that darkness cannot be perceived at all.”

© 2019, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Journal Lesson 107 3-5-19

LESSON 107
Truth will correct all errors in my mind.

Our errors will disappear where we welcome truth. We cannot believe the truth and believe the separation thought at the same time. For instance, I can believe in lack or in abundance, but not both, not together. And if I believe in lack sometimes, the belief in abundance will not be complete and so I will not have a full experience of abundance. There will always be an underlying anxiety that is the fear of returning lack.

Jesus asks us to imagine a state of mind without illusions. I’m trying. I will start with imagining a world where I felt pure love for everything and everyone. In this world, I would never feel confused and conflicted, never feel dissatisfaction. I would never feel the need to be right and victimization and unfairness would not even be words in my vocabulary.

Guilt and fear would be unheard of. I would walk the world without concern for my safety. All animals would eat from my hand, and sit quietly beside me in peace. I try to imagine what it would be like to exist without form, to exist not as human but as God, swimming blissfully in a vast ocean of God. I cannot.

I will stick with imagining the world without fear and guilt in any form. This is something that can be achieved even in our human form as truth corrects all errors in our mind. In paragraph 5, sentence 1 it says:

“When truth has come it harbors in its wings the gift of perfect constancy, and love which does not falter in the face of pain, but looks beyond it, steadily and sure. Here is the gift of healing, for the truth needs no defense, and therefore no attack is possible. Illusions can be brought to truth to be corrected. But the truth stands far beyond illusions, and can not be brought to them to turn them into truth.”

This reminds me of how it was last week with Someone I care about very much. I worried about his sobriety because of the extreme stress he is under. I brought my worry thoughts to the Holy Spirit to be corrected. I chose happiness instead of anxiety. My experience of the situation changed. I was able to be with him without being affected by his pain, neither the mental anguish or the physical pain he is in because he cannot afford the injection that would bring him relief. I do not bring the illusion of no job and physical pain to the truth to be transformed. Illusions cannot be made into truth. This is why I always pray for my thoughts to be corrected, not my body or my bank account or my relationship.

Today, we approach the truth with firm and steady feet, not from a perspective of a supplicant, but as the Son of God expecting what is ours in truth anyway. We are certain of success. We begin this practice by asking Him Who goes with us upon this undertaking. If I feel any uncertainty, this sentence will bring me back to reality. “You are not made of flesh and blood and bone, but were created by the self-same Thought which gave the gift of life to Him as well.” That certainly stiffens by backbone.

Regina’s Tips
Why has meditation become so important? When I meditate, it seems that nothing much is happening. Attention habitually goes into thought, and I gently pull it back to focus on awareness again. After a certain amount of time, attention rests more easily with awareness, but there is still some going out and pulling back that occurs. That’s it, nothing else for up to two hours. But there’s this intuitive feeling that I have. It’s a feeling that something much more powerful is occurring. Something that is subtle to the ego, which looks for progress and tries to measure it, but something very steady and very precise.

To put it in the language of today’s workbook lesson, truth is correcting all errors in my mind as I willingly pull attention out of thought and rest with awareness to the best of my ability. I feel my small, poorly skilled effort is allowing something remarkable to take place.

And that is what today’s lesson tells us.

“It is impossible that anyone could seek it truly, and would not succeed. … Give truth its due, and it will give you yours.”

My Thoughts
This is why I keep practicing meditation even though my mind continues to suffer from lack of discipline, and even though I don’t want to keep up the practice. The ego doesn’t see enough verifiable proof of progress and so wants to stop. But I believe that something very important is happening just out of range of ego thinking. So, I think this will be a good time to use Adyashanti’s guided meditation, The Art of Listening.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Journal Lesson 106 3-4-19-19

LESSON 106
Let me be still and listen to the truth.

“And you will learn your function from the One Who chose it in your Father’s Name for you”.

I often think of those moments that changed the course of my life. I had a moment in which I knew I had to leave my husband. I had been thinking about doing so for a long time, for years, really. But I kept putting it off and then one day the thought came to me that I could not conduct my ministry if I was married to him, and I decided right then to end the marriage with no more questioning and doubting. That thought came from the Holy Spirit and that was the reason I simply accepted it.

A couple of years before that, I had the desire to find something to do that would help me to feel useful since my kids were all nearly grown. It seemed to me that I was going through possibilities and deciding what I wanted to do, but I know that it had been decided for me. I was led to Pathways of Light, and shortly after that, I heard the calling to minister.

It was not a decision made by the ego even though it came through the mind. It was a calling that was so clear and compelling that I simply did what I was told. “I did this” and “I did that” was just a story that I made up to explain my choice because at that time I was not used to following the Holy Spirit, wasn’t familiar with His Voice in the way I came to be. I still needed the idea of words and ego reasoning.

“Hear Him today, and listen to the Word which lifts the veil that lies upon the earth, and wakes all those who sleep and cannot see. God calls to them through you. He needs your voice to speak to them, for who could reach God’s Son except his Father, calling through your Self? Hear Him today, and offer Him your voice to speak to all the multitude who wait to hear the Word that He will speak today.”

God needs my voice. At first, it was hard for me to accept this. I did not think I had anything worth sharing and I was right about that. My ego self had nothing to offer, but I was not being asked to share from that part of the mind. I came to understand that the words or actions that were needed would come through the mind but not from the mind.

It was touch and go for a while until I got the hang of it, but now I experience it regularly even if not perfectly. This is now my favorite prayer: Where would You have me go? What would You have me do? What would You have me say and to whom?

I have sometimes wished I had been given a different function. I wonder why I am not a scribe like Regina. I wish I was a better teacher. I have students that I send to someone else because I am told to do so, and I wonder why I can’t do what they do. But that is just the ego always wanting more and different than it has. The ego is a wanting machine, always dissatisfied.

What Jesus helped me to understand is that it doesn’t matter what part of the Sonship does this thing or that as long as it gets done. The ego thinks we are separate and this automatically creates the idea of competition and dissatisfaction. That realization stopped me from caring about what my part seems to be and now I just try to get better at it.

“Let me be still and listen to the truth.
I am the messenger of God today,
My voice is His, to give what I receive.”

I questioned if I was doing what I came to do. It seems to me that I am, but I still hear the ego voice of doubt. I write and I teach and I counsel and I mentor. As I do so, I am a conduit for His Voice just as I was asked to be. But as I said, I am not a pure conduit, and so I question if I am truly a bringer of miracles. This morning I decided that I am but that I can learn to be better as I continue to clear my mind of ego beliefs so there is nothing interfering with my function.

Regina’s Tips
True spirituality isn’t about belief. It is about your own direct experience.

Our “faith” isn’t based on belief. Our “faith” is based on trust. We trust the teachings enough to try it for ourself. Instead of believing the teachings, we practice them, and through practice we experience truth directly.

Keep this in mind as you go forward with spirituality. There will be a lot of opportunities to believe something. Believing isn’t the point. Practice is the point.

My Thoughts

Why did I believe the thought that I was to leave my husband or the thought that I was to be a minister? I didn’t know much at that time and had not had enough experience to fall back on. What I did have was trust. I had faith that something was being decided for me and that I could trust it. I was told that I am to practice everything I learn and I do that. I am vigilant and I am dedicated to this practice. I had to trust the Voice that gave me that idea because I did not believe in myself enough to do this work consistently. Practice, faith, trust, acceptance, open minded, these are important ideas to me. I live these ideas.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

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