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Gentle Healing Lesson 127, Manual for Teachers, Text.  4-17-19

LESSON 127
There is no love but God’s.

“Love is one. It has no separate parts and no degrees; no kinds nor levels, no divergences and no distinctions.”

“And thus he thinks that he can love at times, and hate at other times. He also thinks that love can be bestowed on one, and yet remain itself although it is withheld from others. To believe these things of love is not to understand it.”

“Love cannot judge.”

“Love is a law without an opposite. Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one, the link between the Father and the Son which holds Them both forever as the same.”

“Love’s meaning is your own, and shared by God Himself. For what you are is what He is.”

What I understand from the first part of this lesson is that God is Love and there is nothing else. If it is not Love it does not exist. The world as I see it with my eyes and experience it through this body is not love and so does not exist. I am not that. I am not here. Me and here are thoughts in my mind and only that.

What I think of as love in this dream is not love at all. How could it be? At its best, it is a pale shadow of love. At its worst, it would be love’s opposite if an opposite of love were possible. In this world the thing we call love is different for different people, things, and situations. It can be bestowed or withheld according to how these things are judged.But love is not that. It does not judge, it does not vary from person to person or change in any way. It is not here but not there.

Even as I begin to understand love, and even as I open my mind and heart to love, I am far from knowing love. Practicing the Loving All Method makes more and more sense as I continue these lessons. And yet, how can it be that I don’t know love? I am love. I am love because my Creator is Love and He created me as part of Himself. So how can I be love and yet not know love? When I sit in quiet and ask to know my Self, I am asking to know Love, to know God. I can do this and will do this because I am asking for what is already mine and is me.

“Seek not within the world to find your Self. Love is not found in darkness and in death. Yet it is perfectly apparent to the eyes that see and ears that hear love’s Voice.”

Jesus says that we only need to give some time to escape from every law in which we now believe. He says I can escape from this world if I do not hold it dear. What law am I holding onto as if it is my salvation? I remember what Regina told me about my son when I was worried. She said that if I remember my Self I will know his Self and then I would not believe his choices could hurt him.

There is a thought in the mind that we have to hold onto what we fear, that we can’t let it go. Even as I surrender my son to God, I feel a frisson of fear, as if there is a law that says my worry is what protects him. That is crazy even to my ego mind. Worry is not love. I have been practicing releasing that insane law.

“Call to your Father, certain that His Voice will answer. He Himself has promised this.”

I say that I am practicing letting go of the law that says I have to worry and be afraid because every time I am certain it is done, I notice fear rising up again. But it is working because the fear is not so intense and each time it is easier to release. I call to God to replace my laws for His and His Voice does answer me. I accept the answer as I can and then I call on Him again and He answers again and I accept more.

“…we cannot leave a part of us outside our love if we would know our Self.”

Since worry is not love, when I worry about my son, I am not loving him and I am not seeing him as the love that he is. How I see him is how I will see myself. As I change my mind and choose to see know my son as the perfect creation he is, I will know my Self. So, it works both ways, I think. I can know my Self and so know his Self, or I can know his Self and so know my Self.

“I bless you, brother, with the Love of God, which I would share with you. For I would learn the joyous lesson that there is no love but God’s and yours and mine and everyone’s.”

Regina’s Tips
I remember the first time I read this lesson. I DID think “there is a kind of love for this, a kind for that; a way of loving one, another way of loving still another.” Back then, if a mother had told me that she loves a bug in the same way she loves her daughter, I would have either been appalled or simply unable to imagine it. But today, I am that mother.

The only reason it would be difficult to understand how a mother can love a bug in the same way she loves her daughter is because one has a misunderstanding about what love is. Don’t get me wrong. I have a more intimate relationship with my daughter, a longer-lasting relationship with my daughter, and a human-to-human relationship with my daughter. All of that is different than my relationship with a passing bug. But the love is the same.

My Thoughts
Ha ha. I was having trouble with the idea of loving other children as I loved my children and here Regina takes it to the next level. Can I love my children in the same way I love a bug? But that is the wrong way to ask the question. I love them in different ways but the love is the same. As Regina pointed out, the relationship with my child is different than the relationship with the bug. But the love is the same because all love is the same or it is not love. Again, I am reminded of the Loving All Method. Before I started that practice, I would not have thought of loving a bug and so I would have been even further from knowing love as it exists.

Regina also says this about love.
How does one describe love? Love is openness. It could be described as embracing, accepting or allowing. It is joyous or compassionate, depending on the response that is pulled forth from it by the appearance. It has no lack in it, no need. One could say it is patient, although that is simply an aspect of its openness and allowance. Judgment is an impossibility for it.

My thoughts
That is a good, succinct description and one that calls for contemplation to fully understand and accept. I am particularly drawn to the idea that love has no need in it. I have often said that neediness is not the same thing as love and until neediness is gone from a relationship, I cannot know love. When I need my son to be healthy, I am not loving him.

Manual for Teachers

“Therefore lay judgment down, not with regret but with a sigh of gratitude.”
Now that we know we cannot judge, why not lay judgment aside? It is a staggering load. I ask Holy Spirit for guidance in all things. In the Rules for Decision we learned this: “2 For you and your adviser must agree on what you want before it can occur. 3 It is but this agreement that permits all things to happen. 4 Nothing can be caused without some form of union, be it with a dream of judgment or the Voice for God. 5 Decisions cause results because they are not made in isolation. 6 They are made by you and your adviser, for yourself and for the world as well. “

Also, in the Song of Prayer it says, “You have been told to ask the Holy Spirit for the answer to any specific problem, and that you will receive a specific answer if such is your need. ...There are decisions to make here, and they must be made whether they be illusions or not.” So I do my best to make no decisions with the ego. That means I must ask the Holy Spirit to be my advisor in every decision.

It is easy enough to tell when I have slipped up and asked the ego for help. I know I have judged when I feel separate from my brother, when I hold a grievance, when I am angry or fearful, when I feel guilty. These are all signs I have picked up the heavy mantel of judgment and am turning to the ego for advice. Those painful reactions are like road signs telling you the path has gotten rocky and impassable and I need to turn around and go the other way, something I am happy to do. When I turn to the Holy Spirit for guidance, my load is light and my way smooth.

Text
“What am I?” is the question I ask the Holy Spirit frequently. I ask it whenever it comes into my mind. I especially ask this question when I feel trapped in my own beliefs. I have experienced some major shifts recently, and the ego response has been very strong. It can be discouraging to move forward only to meet that wall of resistance.

The ego mind will fight against awakening. If I identify too closely to the ego, I will forget that its thoughts and feelings are not mine. Then I would become confused. Of course, I would become confused! It is like being two people at once, and the two people are completely opposed. I wake up with the thought that I give this day to Holy Spirit, and that thought might be immediately followed by a feeling of anxiety for the coming day.

I reject the second feeling as being ego resistance to surrender. It is the ego demanding its right to make plans and decisions and to decide what everything means. But “I” seem to be having the thoughts and the feelings and that used to be confusing. Now, I understand that I am not my thoughts and that I can choose the thoughts that I want to believe. I give my attention to the true thoughts and remove my attention from the ego thoughts.

How is it that I can do this? The answer to this is the answer to the question, “Who am I?” As Jesus tells us in Lesson 236, the mind is our kingdom and we rule it. Do we want to rule it with the ego as our advisor or with the Holy Spirit as our advisor? The choice we make will determine how happy we are and how quickly we evolve spiritually. I am of the Family of God, part of His Creation. That is the “I” that decides, the “I” that is ruler of the mind, I and the Holy Spirit together rule my mind.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Lesson 126, Manual for Teachers, Text.  4-16-19

LESSON 126
All that I give is given to myself.

2 Let us consider what you do believe, in place of this idea. It seems to you that other people are apart from you, and able to behave in ways which have no bearing on your thoughts, nor theirs on yours. Therefore, your attitudes have no effect on them, and their appeals for help are not in any way related to your own. You further think that they can sin without affecting your perception of yourself, while you can judge their sin, and yet remain apart from condemnation and at peace.

I completely understand this and I no longer believe it and I almost never live it. When I first began to understand that all I give is given to myself, I became aware of how I treat people who serve me. For instance, I used to try on clothes in the store and leave them in the room when I was through, sometimes scattered about on the floor.

I probably figured that picking up after me was her job if I thought about it at all. I did not value her as a child of God. Because I did not see her value, and I was giving myself the same thing, lack of value. If I did not recognize my value would I be likely to believe that I deserved forgiveness and love? I can tell you that I did not. The less value I placed in myself, the less I valued others. It was a vicious cycle and the way the ego maintains its existence.

In becoming aware of this careless behavior and the deeper meaning it has, the far reach of its effects, I changed the way I interacted with people. I paid them more attention. I look the clerk who serves me in the eye when I sincerely wish them a good day. I recognize their innate value. I try to remember to treat each person as if it is Jesus serving me because their value is the same as his value.

I am not perfect at seeing the value in everyone, and when I am paying attention to my own chattering mind, I forget. But the cycle has been broken for me, and so I generally remember and when I forget, I quickly realize my error and if it is too late for in-person correction, I give my blessing in my mind, at least.

This practice now includes all areas of my life, all my brothers and sisters. If I am impatient with someone for being slow to understand what I am saying, or to incorporate new ideas, then impatience is what I give myself. It is another way of failing to value the other and thus to fail to value myself. The Holy Spirit is patient with me, and I want to give as He gives. If I notice that I am impatient, I silently ask for correction and for another way to express the idea.

All that I give is given to myself. The Help I need to learn that this is true is with me now. And I will trust in Him.

Then spend a quiet moment, opening your mind to His correction and His Love. And what you hear of Him you will believe, for what He gives will be received by you.

This part of the lesson is of particular interest to me. It is a continuation of the practice of sitting in quiet and asking for His Word. This morning, I asked that He bring to my attention anything in my behavior that indicates I am giving what I would prefer not to receive. I also asked that He heal my mind of the beliefs that are the cause of such behavior. Then I listened. And then, I received.

Regina’s Tips

Well, the day I came to understand the concept of ‘giving and receiving as one’, I understood forgiveness, and I became a very eager practitioner of forgiveness.

I learned ‘giving and receiving are one’ from scribing NTI Ephesians. It was further emphasized in ‘the Code.’ It is summarized by this:

What I think, I see.
What I see, I experience.
What I experience, I think.

How do you feel when you judge a person or situation? How do you feel when you reject a person or a situation? How do you feel when you genuinely accept what is? How do you feel when you love what is? Can you see that you directly experience your own decision to judge, reject, accept or love? Can you see that it is never different; you always experience your own decision?

Giving and receiving are one. Therefore, to have peace, be peace. To know love, be love. And to do that, let go of any thought that does not make you happy. Just let it go. That is forgiveness.

My Thoughts
I love the way Regina can express things in a way that makes them instantly understandable. I am especially drawn to the idea that to have peace, be peace and to have love, be love. I do this by letting go of thoughts that do not make me happy. See. It is simple. This is forgiveness. If I forgive myself and I am happy, then I will treat everyone in such a way as to encourage the same thing in them.

Manual for Teachers
“Remember how many times you thought you knew all the “facts” you needed for judgment, and how wrong you were!”

I really get this. I agree that I don’t have all the facts, not ever, and so I have no way to judge accurately anything. I accept that I do have the Holy Spirit right here in my mind and He does know everything and will judge for me. I have had that experience and often. I know how to become still and let Him remove what is not true from my mind. I know how to relinquish my own judgments and surrender to Him. I do it a lot.

I would say at this point in my life, judgment is just a bad habit, and one I am working to break. I am asking the Holy Spirit to help me be aware of any judgmental thoughts in my mind today. I ask that He show me judgment in whatever forms it might take. I know that sometimes I judge myself more harshly than I ever would anyone else. I know that sometimes judgment sounds like an attack thought, and sometimes it sounds like fear.

I want to be aware of these judgments so that I can allow them to be removed and I can be free of them. This produces an emptiness into which the Holy Spirit can reveal the truth. Since I am having to ask for this help even in being aware of the desire to judge, I suspect that in addition to habitual thinking that there must be some belief left in my mind that judging is a valuable right that I don’t want to give up. Holy Spirit, please remove that belief from my mind. It doesn’t even make sense.

Text
“Any attempt to deny what is must be fearful, and if the attempt is strong it will induce panic. ...You are devoting your mind to what you do not want.” 9. I. 12

Jesus says that to deny what is must be fearful. When I deny what I am, I deny what is. I was reading from the Daily Lessons the section called “What am I?” This is a beautiful section and I am going to read it frequently now because I believe it most of the time and I want to believe it all of the time. Among other things, it says that we are the holy messengers of God who speak for Him, and carrying it to everyone whom He has sent to us, we learn that it is written on our hearts.

When I feel afraid or sick, when I am in pain, or angry, when I succumb to guilt and doubt, I deny what is. When I treat anyone badly, I am not being messenger for God and thus I am not learning what is written on my heart. I deny both of us the truth that brings us to the awareness of Heaven. This includes the clerk at the store, the fellow shopper who is blocking the aisle, the driver who won’t use her turn signal.

In this world of separation with its levels and its orders of difficulty, it seems like some errors are big or important and other things hardly matter. But that is not so. It is the same error that I feel anger and resentment toward a friend, as it is that I was impatient with the store clerk who was moving slowly and talking to a fellow clerk while I was running late. They are the same thing because the only thing is happening is that I am either devoted to God or to ego, devoted to what is, or devoted to nothing.

My function is to remember my true devotion, to be a messenger of God, teaching love, teaching everyone what they are, and so learning what I am. And when I forget, when I get caught up in the illusion, my function is to forgive myself as soon as I notice that I am devoting myself to nothing. When I think of this, I get excited! Today is not just another day. It is a day of remembering and a day of teaching. Today I am God’s messenger.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Lesson 125, Manual for Teachers, Text.  4-15-19

LESSON 125
In quiet I receive God’s Word today.

8 It is your voice to which you listen as He speaks to you. It is your Word He speaks. It is the Word of freedom and of peace, of unity of will and purpose, with no separation nor division in the single Mind of Father and of Son. In quiet listen to your Self today, and let Him tell you God has never left His Son, and you have never left your Self.

9 Only be quiet. You will need no rule but this, to let your practicing today lift you above the thinking of the world, and free your vision from the body’s eyes. Only be still and listen. You will hear the word in which the Will of God the Son joins in his Father’s Will, at one with it, with no illusions interposed between the wholly indivisible and true. As every hour passes by today, be still a moment and remind yourself you have a special purpose for this day; in quiet to receive the Word of God.

His Voice awaits your silence, for His Word can not be heard until your mind is quiet for a while, and meaningless desires have been stilled. Await His Word in quiet.

This is what I have been practicing this week, this being still, quieting my mind and listening for His Word. It needs me to be quiet and still, and somehow, I knew this must be true. Things are happening in me. Some long held beliefs have fallen away as if they were never there. I had not been asking for this, nor even thinking about it. I just noticed that I can’t find those beliefs anymore.

I did the meditation before I started writing and while I did notice thoughts and the mind’s desire to follow those thoughts, I was also aware of a strong desire to be here now with Self. Without any desire to direct the Self, I knew my mind was being purified and I still feel like part of me is still in meditation.

Regina’s Tips
Today’s lesson tells us that God/Spirit has not waited for our return to it to give its word to us. I think it is really important for us to realize that inner wisdom has always been there; we just haven’t always been listening. In fact, often we have purposefully chosen the opposite of inner wisdom.

To the degree that we are unhappy or suffering, that is to the degree that we choose the opposite of inner wisdom.

The fact above can be painful for some people to look at with absolute honesty. Some of you who are reading this today will avoid accepting that statement as true, even though it would be really helpful if you did accept it as true. That is okay. As today’s lesson says, you are not “led by force, but only love. … not judged, but only sanctified.” However, you will find happiness sooner if you can accept the statement above.

Many people think it is hard to hear the voice of wisdom. I don’t think that is true. I think we simply need to begin to listen to it instead of wanting to do things our own way. When today’s lesson asks us to be still, quiet, silent, so the voice can speak, it really means we need to put our mind’s will aside and be willing to follow that intuitive voice like Katie does. The more we do that, the clearer the voice becomes.

My Thoughts
I love the idea of surrender. To the degree that I have surrendered, I have become more peaceful and happier and I feel so much closer to my Self and to my Creator. Even though I understand surrender have discovered the benefits of surrender, I still cling stubbornly to some degree of independence from my Self and from God.

That’s crazy, isn’t it? I don’t understand it either. I seldom do it deliberately, but I know I do it because I am not supremely happy at all times and choosing to listen to the ego mind is the only reason I would not be happy. This daily meditation in which I sit in stillness and quiet the mind as much as I can is deepening my desire for surrender. It is healing my mind and my only part seems to be that I am receptive to that healing.

Manual for Teachers
10. HOW IS JUDGMENT RELINQUISHED? P 3
3 The aim of our curriculum, unlike the goal of the world’s learning, is the recognition that judgment in the usual sense is impossible. This is not an opinion but a fact. In order to judge anything rightly, one would have to be fully aware of an inconceivably wide range of things; past, present and to come. One would have to recognize in advance all the effects of his judgments on everyone and everything involved in them in any way. And one would have to be certain there is no distortion in his perception, so that his judgment would be wholly fair to everyone on whom it rests now and in the future. Who is in a position to do this? Who except in grandiose fantasies would claim this for himself?

Journal
This is the paragraph that made all the difference in my life. When I read this paragraph, I understood that I have no business judging anything, not that I shouldn’t but that I can’t. I didn’t stop judging immediately, but I did start noticing when I was judging; I became willing not to judge. It felt strange to me at first, and I felt the ego’s objections very strongly. After all, how could I navigate the world without judging? Just crossing the street required a judgment of timing for safety’s sake.

So what I did was to take it in steps. My first step was to look at the judgments that seemed most obvious and with the most potential for harm. I asked the Holy Spirit to guide me in this, to point me to the ones He wanted me to look at, and then to correct my thinking about them. I began to notice when I was angry with someone, or resentful toward them, and realized I must have judged him. I would bring this judgment to the Holy Spirit and let Him reinterpret it for me.

I began to do this when I was unhappy about a situation. I would realize that I must have judged it, and so I would ask the Holy Spirit to take that judgment from my mind and to give me a correct judgment. Really, the only reason I decided it was bad was that I asked the ego what it meant. Do I really want the ego mind making decisions for me? So it wasn’t that hard to change my mind. The Holy Spirit knows everything and so can make a decision for me that will help and not harm.

This all sounds so simple and straight forward as I write about it, but while I was developing this new way of making decisions it was pretty messy. I would vacillate between judging with the ego and accepting the Holy Spirit’s judgment. I would balk at times, insisting I knew the right judgment. I would sometimes feel resentful to have lost this “right” to judge. But I trust Jesus and so I kept at it and the excellent results of giving judgment to the Holy Spirit convinced me this was the way to go.

At some point, I began to open more completely to the Holy Spirit, asking for guidance in all things. I began the process of learning to fully surrender to the One Who Knows. I went through the same messy process as I made this shift as well, but it wasn’t as hard because the Holy Spirit had already proved Itself to me. I had tasted the freedom of giving up a job that I was unprepared to do and letting it be done for me. Now, I was just extending that surrender and gaining more freedom.

I am still mastering this decision. I make mistakes and sometimes get pulled back into the old way of fumbling through the world without a clue. But there has been another shift for me even if it is not completely accepted yet. It is harder for me to explain. My trust is so much greater now that I have surrendered on a deeper level. I trust the Holy Spirit to decide for me most things, and I no longer think about each judgment.

In fact, the only time I notice judgment is when I have tried to do it on my own again. I change my mind as quickly as I can because I don’t want to go back to that insane way of living. I want to move forward, surrendering more and more of the ego until I am no longer struggling to live, but am being lived. That is not my experience yet, but it is closer to it than ever before.

The ego hates this idea of not being in charge of my life and recognizes its eventual demise if this keeps up and so it throws up objections and blocks, but this is a done deal. Now it is all just details. I practice surrender of that part of the mind and I experience living from my holy mind, and the ego begins to recede into background noise. Then something gets triggered and it’s loud and obnoxious again until I bring it to the Holy Spirit. Eventually, though, this will end. There is no doubt in my mind that the ego is on its way out because that is my truest desire.

Text

“You do not recognize the enormous waste of energy you expend in denying truth.” 9.1.11

I almost never get angry with anyone these days but I was reading my journal from a couple of years ago when I saw this entry. It seems I was angry with someone and I had spent two days arguing for my anger, insisting that he be wrong and that his actions were hurting me. In my mind I was insisting that the only way I could be happy is if he sacrificed his perceived needs on my behalf. It took nearly two days for me to get past this idea, to move my hands from in front of my eyes so that I could see. What a waste of energy that was.

How could my happiness depend on what another person does or does not do? How could my happiness depend on getting my way at the expense of another? How could my happiness depend on what happens in a dream? Would God put my happiness out of my reach? Would he make happiness something elusive, something that is only sometimes possible?

Here is what I discovered when I finally remembered that I wanted to see. I decided that all of my previous goals that involved a need to have something happen were unimportant compared with the goal of knowing God. I let it all go to the Holy Spirit for purification. I let Him heal my mind. I stopped interfering with love and accepted it. Happiness happened.

The situation itself remains unresolved for a while longer and the ego mind wanted to revive the issue bringing love into question at times, but I was not interested. I was aware of those thoughts and when one snagged my attention I asked that the Holy Spirit to remove it from my mind. There is a song I listen to every night as I go to sleep.

It repeats over and over the words, “thank you,” and, “your love is pouring down.” As the song repeats these words, I imagine that His love is pouring down on me, washing away the doubts and uncertainties that may have plagued me during the day, healing all that is not truth in my mind. I am filled with gratitude.

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Gentle Healing Lesson 124, Manual for Teachers, Text.  4-12-19

LESSON 124
Let me remember I am one with God.

How holy are our minds! And everything we see reflects the holiness within the mind at one with God and with itself.

No miracle can ever be denied to those who know that they are one with God. No thought of theirs but has the power to heal all forms of suffering in anyone, in times gone by and times as yet to come, as easily as in the ones who walk beside them now.

Peace be to you today. Secure your peace by practicing awareness you are one with your Creator, as He is with you. Sometime today, whenever it seems best, devote a half an hour to the thought that you are one with God. This is our first attempt at an extended period for which we give no rules nor special words to guide your meditation. We will trust God’s Voice to speak as He sees fit today, certain He will not fail. Abide with Him this half an hour. He will do the rest.

Let me remember I am one with God, at one with all my brothers and my Self, in everlasting holiness and peace.

Oh my gosh! What an extraordinary lesson! How holy we are, not the little ego self, but the mind that knows itself as one with God.  There are two things I am going to do today. I am going to give the thirty minutes to allow the Holy Spirit to work in my mind. The message that I will receive will not likely be in words, but in healing. Who knows, maybe a revelation. I am also going to give myself little breaks in which I sit for moments or minutes at a time allowing more purification. I have seen how powerful this is and I want to continue doing it.

The other thing I am going to do is to keep this lesson in my awareness. I can be aware of the truth or the illusion but not both. So by choosing to keep the truth in my awareness, I automatically exclude the ego. It is important to direct my awareness according to my highest and most heartfelt desire as much as I can. This is still something of a practice for me, and I will be gentle and compassionate with myself as I learn to make this as consistent as are my other practices.

Regina’s Tips

What if we were to realize that our awakening is in progress? And then with trust in that fact, what if we continue to follow instructions so that spiritual progress can continue?

When Michael Langford was teaching me to meditate, he shared some quotes with me. These are the quotes:

“Don’t look for quick results; there may be none within your noticing.” ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Don’t waste energy on thinking or evaluating how well or how badly you are doing in your meditation.” ~ Annamalai Swami

“Don’t be discouraged by the length of the journey, and don’t slacken in your efforts to get home.” ~ Annamalai Swami

“The practice is the progress.” ~ The Most Direct Means to Eternal Bliss

My Thoughts

This is good advice! I will keep in mind since meditation is not easy for me.

Manual for Teachers
“It is necessary for the teacher of God to realize, not that he should not judge, but that he cannot.”

This is one of my favorite passages from ACIM because it changed forever and for the better the way I live my life. Now, more often than not, I ask the Holy Spirit to decide for me. I am a wanderer, lost in a land not my own. I don’t know where I am or what anything here means. For the longest time, I have been like Moses wandering in the desert. For the longest time, I had no destination, only wanting the journey to be as safe and productive as I could make it, but not knowing how to do that, and often failing.

It is different now. I have discovered that I have a Guide who knows everything! This guide knows where I am going and how to get there. He knows how to help me avoid the perils and to extract myself from the pitfalls when I ignore His help. He decides for me whatever needs to be done. All I have to do is turn to Him and ask for help. He is ever with me, ready to help me as much as I will let Him, and to wait patiently when I fail to call on Him.

I often ask these questions now. What does this mean? What would You have me know about this? What is this for? What would you have me say and to whom? Where would you have me go? I ask Him to show me another way to perceive each uncomfortable situation. Instead of judging for myself, I wait and allow His judgment to come through me. I am grateful because He is never distracted by appearances and always shows me my innate innocence and that of everyone else.

Attack
The desire to attack and the belief I can be attacked by someone or something outside of me, is an error that must be undone if I want peace of mind and happiness. Attack can be physical or it can be with words, even thoughts. It is an attack on my brother if I judge him. It is an attack on myself if I judge myself.

I first learned to recognize all forms of attack, then to realize that it was hurting me and everyone else, then I chose to decide for God instead of attack. I released those attack thoughts as I noticed them. I made amends for the ones that made it past my filter. Nowadays, what desire or belief in attack is in my mind is mostly very subtle. So I ask the Holy Spirit to keep me mindful of those subtle forms of attack so I can release them as well.

 

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Gentle Healing Lesson 123, Manual for Teachers, Text.  4-11-19

Lesson 123
I thank my Father for His gifts to me.

“Give thanks that He has not abandoned you, and that His Love forever will remain shining on you, forever without change. Give thanks as well that you are changeless, for the Son He loves is changeless as Himself. Be grateful you are saved. Be glad you have a function in salvation to fulfil. Be thankful that your value far transcends your meager gifts and petty judgments of the one whom God established as His Son.”

“Thanks be to you who heard, for you become the messenger who brings His Voice with you, and lets It echo round and round the world. Receive the thanks of God today, as you give thanks to Him. For He would offer you the thanks you give, since He receives your gifts in loving gratitude, and gives them back a thousand and a hundred thousand more than they were given. He will bless your gifts by sharing them with you. And so they grow in power and in strength, until they fill the world with gladness and with gratitude.”

“Receive His thanks, and you will understand how lovingly He holds you in His Mind, how deep and limitless His care for you, how perfect is His gratitude to you. Remember hourly to think of Him, and give Him thanks for everything He gave His Son, that he might rise above the world, remembering his Father and his Self.”

This is a day dedicated to giving and receiving thanks and I do feel genuinely grateful for all that has been done in and through me. I feel emptier is the only way I can think to phrase it. Most of the fear and guilt I have struggled with seems to be gone. And if any of it comes back, I now know that it can be released and so I don’t need to be concerned about it, just give it over again in confidence that it will be undone for me.

The ego mind is frantic about all this. It is trying to use the old hooks to bring my attention back to past dramas but I am not only uninterested, but unafraid. I notice the thoughts that I am tempted to follow and calmly release them to the Holy Spirit. Just a bit of housekeeping, sweeping away the cobwebs.

I listened to A Course in Miracles last night as I slept and that is helpful, too, and another thing I am grateful for. Here is one thing I heard from C 8, The Gift of Freedom.

“My mission was simply to unite the will of the Sonship with the Will of the Father by being aware of the Father’s Will myself. This is the awareness I came to give you, and your problem in accepting it is the problem of this world. Dispelling it is salvation, and in this sense I am the salvation of the world. The world must therefore despise and reject me, because the world is the belief that love is impossible.”

I have to smile because the practice of the loving all method makes even more sense. If the world is the belief that love is impossible, the way to undo this is to think only of love regardless of the images of pain and suffering that are manifest in it. I also remember another sentence though I don’t remember it exactly and don’t know from where in the Course.

The basic idea was that to be in the Kingdom I must think only of the Kingdom. This must be my only desire and my only focus. I think that vigilance for my thoughts and a growing willingness to release the thoughts that tether me to the world is what makes it possible for me to keep my mind on the Kingdom. I am so very grateful for the Inner Guidance that has directed my every step and has brought me this far and will bring me all the way.

Regina’s Tips
NTI Luke, Chapter 17 says that gratitude “nurses your willingness to full health. Do not hold back on gratitude. Take time to sit in quiet and know your gratitude.”

NTI Hebrews, Chapter 12 says, “Worship in reverence and awe the true desire of the Heart by giving your gratitude to it. Through gratitude, [true] desire is increased.”

My Thoughts
NTI is filled with references to gratitude and the good it does us to practice gratitude. So is A Course in Miracles. Grateful is mentioned about 22 times and gratitude 99 times. I am letting myself feel gratitude, I am thinking about how grateful I am and I am being still each time the idea comes into my mind, being still and quiet and letting the Holy Spirit do His work in my mind. Gratitude is an aspect of Self and will help me know my Self.

Manual for Teachers
“As the teacher of God advances in his training, he learns one lesson with increasing thoroughness. He does not make his own decisions; he asks his Teacher for His answer, and it is this he follows as his guide for action. This becomes easier and easier, as the teacher of God learns to give up his own judgment.”

I cannot judge anything because I do not have the information necessary to do so. All I know is what I have learned from the past or from others and none of this is reliable. Even if all my information was reliable, I am very limited in what I can know. If I think I should do a certain thing, I might ask myself if I really know enough to make that judgment. Do I know all the possible outcomes of my decision? Do I know how it will affect me in the future, or how it will affect everyone touched by that decision now and in the future?

Of course, I do not have that information. I would feel frozen in indecision if I tried to work all that out, but I don’t need to guess, and guessing is what I am doing when I judge on my own. I can be given knowledge. If I stop trying to make decisions on my own, I can simply ask to be guided. That is a function of the Holy Spirit and it will be done for me as I request it. I will know what to do in any situation as long as I ask the Holy Spirit to decide for me.

The Holy Spirit has brought to my attention my resistance in asking Him at times. If fear enters into the situation, I can feel the resistance to letting go. This is absolutely insane. Knowing what I know now, how is it that I think I must keep control of the situation? How can I believe that I ever really had control? Fear makes us all insane. As I notice these thoughts in my mind, I ask the Holy Spirit to help me as I let them go. I am asking Him to add His strength to my wavering desire to be helped.

It is this consistent strengthening of my desire to see things differently and my willingness to be led that has brought me more clarity. I see now that the world we have made is not the world I want to keep in memory. It doesn’t make sense and the more we tinker with it, the less sense it makes. It is painful to see, but look I must. All of this is made by a mind that wanted to experience something outside of Knowledge. I’m done with it. I want only to lay aside my foolish notions of what needs to happen and accept what I receive through the Holy Spirit.

Text
VII. Looking Within, P3
3 The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you can see the results of His Presence, and through them you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly not of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond all of them. Perceiving His results, you will understand where He must be, and finally know what He is.

Journal

When people experience their awakening, they say that they see the world entirely differently.  Fear falls away and they no longer see guilt, but only love.  That is surely a miracle! I have not yet experienced that miracle. However, I have witnessed the results of the Holy Spirit’s presence in my life.

I have experienced pain disappear because the Holy Spirit healed my mind at my request. I have seen injuries heal quickly and without pain, and I am sure it would have been instantaneous if I had been ready for that. I have watched as time slowed down because I needed it to do so and called on Jesus to adjust time for me. I have witnessed anger, fear, and guilt dissolve so completely that I could not remember what they felt like.

I have read about miracles in the lives of others. Anita Moorjani talks about her miraculous experience in Dying to Be Me. It is a well documented story and is the work of the Holy Spirit making clear His presence. Jan Frazier shares her story of fear falling away in such a dramatic way that we cannot miss the miracle of it. I have talked to several people who witnessed the dead returning to life at a workshop given by Nouk Sanchez. And she has shared healing miracles that occurred to her personally.

When our minds are healed we experience the presence of the Holy Spirit and we know that It is real. The Holy Spirit is an invisible power but a very real power, and that power is made manifest in the world through our acceptance of the Atonement. We can’t see gravity, but we know it is there because we stay grounded to the earth. We can’t see love but we know it is real when we look at our children. We don’t see the Holy Spirit, but we know He exists because He enables us to transcend the laws of the world.

The world is an illusion, but it doesn’t seem like an illusion. It feels very real to us. Its laws seem immutable. It may not, in reality, matter what happens in this illusion, it is important, I think, to allow the miracle to express within the illusion. It is in this way we make visible the invisible, and we become convinced that the Holy Spirit in us exists. It is not a miracle that the world changes, the miracle is the change of mind that creates the appearance of change. The change itself is merely the manifestation of the miracle, but it is a powerful effect as it witnesses to the existence of your power being used for healing.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Lesson 122, Manual for Teachers, Text.  4-10-19

Lesson 122
Forgiveness offers everything I want.

11 Sink into happiness as you begin these practice periods, for they hold out the sure rewards of questions answered and what your acceptance of the answer brings.

12 Before the light you will receive today the world will fade until it disappears, and you will see another world arise you have no words to picture. Now we walk directly into light, and we receive the gifts that have been held in store for us since time began, kept waiting for today.

13 Forgiveness offers everything you want.

14 Be tempted not to let your gifts slip by and drift into forgetfulness, but hold them firmly in your mind by your attempts to think of them at least a minute as each quarter of an hour passes by.

Forgiveness offers everything I want.
Today I have accepted this as true.
Today I have received the gifts of God.

These are the ideas that I am focused on. I fully understand the importance of forgiveness. I don’t need to be convinced that forgiveness offers me everything I want. I know what forgiveness is. It is the realization that I and I alone are responsible for my script so there is no one or nothing to forgive. I forgive what has not been done to me. Forgiveness is the realization that these images that represent separation, the world of time and space, the many bodies, are not real, but are illusions. I forgive the world for what I thought it was.

Now I am mastering my decision to forgive the world. Little things come up showing me what yet needs to be healed. I release them to the Holy Spirit and He heals me. Sometimes it takes but a second or two and sometimes an hour or two, but never do I ever believe it is something I want to keep. I know beyond a doubt that when a grievance enters my mind, I will not keep it. So, today I choose to remember my purpose and to stay in awareness of forgiveness and the effect of forgiveness. If I should drift into forgetfulness, I will stop long enough to restore my mind to this holy place.

Here is an example of how this works for me. I had the thought this morning that I haven’t actually spoken to my son in a few days and he is not participating in our group texts right now. This was followed by fear that he is not OK. So, I went into stillness and I looked at this with the Holy Spirit.

I received the knowing that this thought was tethering me to the world, so I released it to the Holy Spirit so that He could heal my mind and restore it to peace. I don’t want that thought back. It may show up again, but by forgiving it, I no longer need to cast my attention on it and follow it to fear and suffering. This is how I use forgiveness to lift the veil.

Afterward, I noticed that I still have a lump in my throat. That represents a part of the thought I did not give to the Holy Spirit. I looked again with Him and He showed me that there is still a belief in my mind that suffering with my son is how I love him. Of course, that is an old thought,  a crazy thought, and so I gave that to Him as well and now I feel the lump dissolving.

Regina’s Tips

Are we ready to let go of trying to get what we want? Are we ready to let the universe bring what it will? Are we ready to embrace anything and everything that comes while letting go of all dissenting chatter that arises in our minds?

Are we ready?

My thoughts

For a while now, I have been questioning my wants. As soon as I think I want something, I look at it with the Holy Spirit and then I let it go to Him. I have been wrong so many times when I thought I knew what I wanted that I have given up on making those decisions on my own. From Attainment of the Real World:

12 Only the Holy Spirit knows what you need. For He will give you all things that do not block the way to light. And what else could you need? In time, He gives you all the things that you need have, and will renew them as long as you have need of them. He will take nothing from you as long as you have any need of it. And yet He knows that everything you need is temporary, and will but last until you step aside from all your needs and realize that all of them have been fulfilled. Therefore He has no investment in the things that He supplies, except to make certain that you will not use them on behalf of lingering in time. He knows that you are not at home there, and He wills no delay to wait upon your joyous homecoming.

13 Leave, then, your needs to Him. He will supply them with no emphasis at all upon them. What comes to you of Him comes safely, for He will ensure it never can become a dark spot, hidden in your mind and kept to hurt you. Under His guidance you will travel light and journey lightly, for His sight is ever on the journey’s end, which is His goal. God’s Son is not a traveler through outer worlds. However holy his perception may become, no world outside himself holds his inheritance. Within himself he has no needs, for light needs nothing but to shine in peace, and from itself to let the rays extend in quiet to infinity.

Manual for Teachers
“Changes are required in the minds of God’s teachers. This may or may not involve changes in the external situation”

I am very settled where I am and I wouldn’t want to leave my family. But, if I felt strong guidance to do so, then I would. Most of the time this doesn’t happen. Regina was guided to move. Robert and Mary were guided to move several times. But for most of us, right where we are with the challenges facing us is exactly where we need to be. There is, after all, no need to travel anywhere to find God because He is already in us and we are in Him.

What has been necessary is that I follow the training program given me for the purpose of healing my mind. I am completely dedicated to that. I want to correct as many mistakes as I can. I welcome the situations that trigger my thinking errors because it is now that I undo what was done in the past. These situations arise in my mind for that purpose alone.

There is no room in my mind for grievances or attack thoughts or judgments. When I see evidence of defensiveness on my part, I immediately sit with the Holy Spirit until I feel that I have left it with Him. I do my best to heal all relationships and it is a joy to do this. Sometimes I think it would take a miracle to heal a relationship and that is very exciting because through the Love that is God within me, I have access to just such a miracle.

Text
“You have learning handicaps in a very literal sense. There are areas in your learning skills that are so impaired that you can progress only under constant, clear-cut direction, provided by a Teacher Who can transcend your limited resources.” T12.V

A Course in Miracles has provided me with a special curriculum, and the Holy Spirit is my Teacher. It is here that I am learning about love. Mostly, I am learning what is not love.

Here are a couple things that I have learned that help me recognize what love is not. Here are some examples of the ego’s idea of love. It is not love when I yearn to be with someone because I feel empty. That is using the person, not loving them. It is not love when I think that I am incomplete, that is neediness and it too leads to using. It is not love when I comfort someone who is grieving because that person’s grief makes me uncomfortable.

Here is something else I have learned about love through my Teacher. Love isn’t something I find in someone else, and it is not something I can lose. I have learned that Love is what I am and so I don’t need someone else to provide it, nor can I lose it. And something else I learned is that in order to know the love that I am, I must share it. It is not something I get, but it is something I give, and it is something I recognize in the giving.

ACIM is a good curriculum, and the Holy Spirit is a good and faithful Teacher. I understand that I can progress only under constant, clear-cut direction, and I get this direction from Him. I choose to follow His Guidance and not turn to the ego mind that knows nothing about love.

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Gentle Healing Lesson 121, Manual for Teachers, Text.  4-9-19

LESSON 121
Forgiveness is the key to happiness

6 Forgiveness is acquired. It is not inherent in the mind, which cannot sin. As sin is an idea you taught yourself, forgiveness must be learned by you as well, but from a Teacher other than yourself, Who represents the other Self in you. Through Him you learn how to forgive the self you think you made, and let it disappear. Thus you return your mind as one to Him Who is your Self, and Who can never sin.

The unforgiving mind must learn through your forgiveness that it has been saved from hell. And as you teach salvation, you will learn. Yet all your teaching and your learning will be not of you, but of the Teacher Who was given you to show the way to you.

The unforgiving mind does not believe that giving and receiving are the same.

I know that the unforgiving mind has made a living hell out of life. In the moment we had the tiny mad idea and imaged a world of separation, this unhappy world unfolded. We forgot our true identity which is of God and believed in the one we made which is the opposite of Love. This is where guilt and fear were born and it is here that they must be forgiven if we are to return to our natural state of being, our true Self.

Jesus reminds us that we have the key to happiness in forgiveness and he reminds us that to give is to receive. The exercise for this lesson is to reimagine someone we do not presently like and to see the spark of divinity in them, to focus on that spark until it is all we see. Then we imagine someone we do like and let the light from the two of them combine and in their brilliance to encompass our self. This is an exercise in forgiveness and in reinforcing the belief that to give is to receive.

When I did the exercise, I was wondering who I would choose. I couldn’t think of anyone I had a problem with. I thought my mind was wandering around in ego land thinking about a group I am part of, and I tried to pull it back to the task at hand. This one person kept getting in the way of my meditation until suddenly, my mind snapped to the realization that she was the one I was to use. Sometimes my mind is a little slow on the uptake. ~smile~

The ego doesn’t hate her but on the other hand, didn’t want to forgive her either. Evidently, my ego mind wanted to keep her as an annoyance. I had a hard time settling on her as the one to see differently. Finally, I asked the Holy Spirit to help me make this meditation a valuable experience. I then begin to see her as spirit rather than the personality/body I knew. I let that light spread until I was no longer aware of the personality traits my ego didn’t like about her ego.

The one I like came immediately to mind, surprising me in its choice. This one presents an ego equally imperfect but for some reason, I have no trouble seeing her as her Self.  In my mind, her ego personification fell away quickly. As her light glowed brighter it combined with the light of the one who was my “enemy” and the two of those bright Lights blessed me with forgiveness and we were one brilliant Light.

Even as I was writing about my experience, there was, and is, a silence in my mind beneath the words and I am confident that the Holy Spirit is healing my mind of the idea of enemies and the idea that any of these bodies is separate from me. He is healing my mind of the belief that it is possible to lose when giving. I wrote the words I need to remember every hour on a card that I can take with me.

Regina’s Tips

Today’s workbook lesson says of the ego mind, “It does not ask, because it thinks it knows. It does not question, certain it is right.” The lesson also says that we learn forgiveness “from a Teacher other than yourself, Who represents the other Self in you.”

It is time for us to begin asking within for understanding and guidance. If we are to find freedom, we need to let the teacher who knows the way take the lead.

The ego mind does not ask, because it thinks it knows. Therefore, we will ask. We will not come from ego. We will accept that we do not know, and we will ask. I encourage you to take time at least 1-3 times a week to sit quietly and ask within for whatever you need to see or realize now. Leave the question open, and let the genuine answer come.

My Thoughts

This is a practice I am willing to embrace. I know how to ask and I know how to listen. Sometimes I am given words and sometimes just a knowing that I translate into words. I can do this and do so already to some extent. This conscious and deliberate yield greater results so I will try it.

Manual for Teachers

“The body’s eyes will continue to see differences. But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. ...The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth.”

I love how simple Jesus makes this. In sorting what we see there are only two categories, real and unreal. When my eyes show me a sick body, the ego mind makes a series of decisions to determine that it knows something about that person. What is the sickness, how sick are they, is it contagious, who is guilty, and other things. It uses these categories to decide if the person can be or even should be healed.

When my mind is healed my eyes still show me a sick body but the mind ignores that. It doesn’t acknowledge any distinctions in form or severity. The healed mind decides it is not true and therefore sees only God’s unchanging creation. The healed mind sees only the Will of God. As I am able to do that, I consider it a prayer. If I am completely unaffected by the ego image of a sick body, then the light in my mind can ignite the light in the other person’s mind and a miracle is given.

Text
II. The Way to Remember God, P 7
7 A little while and you will see me, for I am not hidden because you are hiding. I will awaken you as surely as I awakened myself, for I awoke for you. In my resurrection is your release. Our mission is to escape from crucifixion, not from redemption. Trust in my help, for I did not walk alone, and I will walk with you as our Father walked with me. Do you not know that I walked with Him in peace? And does not that mean that peace goes with us on the journey?

Could Jesus be any clearer? He is with us on this journey. He will awaken us as surely as he was awakened himself. I take great comfort in that and I feel so much love and appreciation for my brother that it brings tears to my eyes. I am much closer to awakening now than I used to be.

There are many ego ideas I no longer believe. My faith is stronger, my desire for awakening more heartfelt. But I still have difficult moments in which I doubt and so that is why this paragraph is so important to me. It reminds me of Lesson 70 in which he says, “If it helps you, think of me holding your hand and leading you. And I assure you this will be no idle fantasy.”

Our brother is truly with us, helping us, reassuring us, bringing us home. All he asks of us is to trust him. And when even this small thing is too much for us, he understands and helps us to build our trust. No wonder I cry in appreciation and love.

© 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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