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Study of the Text 1-18-13

V. The Function of the Miracle Worker
1 Before miracle workers are ready to undertake their function in this world, it is essential that they fully understand the fear of release. Otherwise they may unwittingly foster the belief that release is imprisonment, a belief that is already very prevalent. This misperception arises in turn from the belief that harm can be limited to the body. That is because of the underlying fear that the mind can hurt itself. None of these errors is meaningful, because the miscreations of the mind do not really exist. This recognition is a far better protective device than any form of level confusion, because it introduces correction at the level of the error. It is essential to remember that only the mind can create, and that correction belongs at the thought level. To amplify an earlier statement, spirit is already perfect and therefore does not require correction. The body does not exist except as a learning device for the mind. This learning device is not subject to errors of its own, because it cannot create. It is obvious, then, that inducing the mind to give up its miscreations is the only application of creative ability that is truly meaningful.

Well, if I had not already come to this conclusion, this paragraph would have blown me out of the water! Let’s look at this sentence:

None of these errors is meaningful, because the miscreations of the mind do not really exist.

This is the bottom line. The mind’s miscreations do not actually exist. These miscreations include the body. That’s right, the body that most of us are still so closely identified. The body does not exist. I think I know this, then some little thing happens or some stray thought betrays me, and I realize I still believe in the body.

Jesus has told us that the body is merely part of our experience in the physical world, but he also says that it is almost impossible to deny its existence in the world and that we should not try to do so.  In this world I have a body, but this does not in any way make the body real. Just because I have thought of a body and then projected onto the world so that I can experience it, does not mean it actually exists. No matter how real it looks and feels, no matter how vivid the experience of it, no matter how strongly I identify myself to it, the body is still an illusion.

Because I am ready to undo that identification with body, the Holy Spirit is helping me one step at a time. I think it began in earnest, when He directed me to study Lesson 190, and to practice what I learned there. I began to let go of the idea that pain is real. In this lesson Jesus tells us that it is our thoughts that cause us pain. He says pain cannot be real because it is not part of God. Holy Spirit had me use this idea every time the body experienced pain.

After doing this for months, with extraordinary results, I began to realize that if pain is not real because God is not pain, then guilt cannot be real either. All that awful guilt that seemed so impossible to give up must be just a thought in my mind, too. So I continued the study until, very slowly, guilt began to loosen its grip on me. Or more accurately stated, I began to loosen my grip on guilt. It is amazing to me that pain and guilt are not real, and yet it is now clear to me that they are only thoughts I choose to believe. I but do this to myself.

Now the Holy Spirit has me working more directly on the idea of the body itself as an illusion. The other work was leading to this. How else do we feel pain and guilt except through the body. Even emotional pain is possible only if I believe in the body. Bodies are the symbol of the idea of separation. They are the way we experience separation, and separation is the cause of suffering of every kind.

As I have mentioned before, the Holy Spirit guided me to set aside two of my favorite magic potions, the sleep aid and the headache pill. I can do this because I know that He is not asking me to sacrifice them, or to suffer for God. He is asking me to use this experience to remember that the body is not real and that the problems with the body are equally unreal.

If the body is a thought in the mind that is projected onto the world, then the ailments of the body can only be more thoughts. And no matter how much I project, the actual location is not the world, but my mind, so the location of the ailment can also only be my mind. How can a pill heal an illusion except that the mind that miscreated both, decided on that solution. I made both the problem and the solution and neither one truly exist.

This idea is so clear to me that you would think it would be a snap to do this, but, alas, the mind really wants to keep its illusions in place. Last night I thought about taking an Ambien because I wanted to go to sleep early so I could get up early, and I did not feel sleepy enough to do that. Then I became nervous thinking this might mean I would not be able to go to sleep.

I considered it with my thinking mind (always a mistake) and soon I was confused about the whole thing. It was a brief, but total confusion, in which I forgot that the body cannot decide it is sleepy or not sleepy. It cannot have insomnia. Only the mind can do this. The body has no creative powers. I may as well believe that my hammer can decide what it can do or not do. The body is a tool that responds to the beliefs held in the mind.

As my mind began to clear, I forgot all about the Ambien. It would be silly to take a pill made to put the body to sleep when my mind was the actual source of sleepiness in the body. Then I noticed another thought, this one from Spirit. I was actually keeping myself awake when I could have gone to bed earlier. I realized that I do this all the time. I set myself up to “need” the pill. The pill is important to the ego mind because it reinforces the idea that the body is real and is creative. This keeps the ego in place and in charge.

This practice the Holy Spirit has me doing is very important. It has nothing to do with taking pills or not taking them. He is using this practice to help me break the bond I have with the physical self, to remember who I am. In this step of the process he is helping me to do so by showing me how to induce the mind to give up its miscreations.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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1-17-13

1-17-13
5 The value of the Atonement does not lie in the manner in which it is expressed. In fact, if it is used truly, it will inevitably be expressed in whatever way is most helpful to the receiver. This means that a miracle, to attain its full efficacy, must be expressed in a language that the recipient can understand without fear. This does not necessarily mean that this is the highest level of communication of which he is capable. It does mean, however, that it is the highest level of communication of which he is capable now. The whole aim of the miracle is to raise the level of communication, not to lower it by increasing fear.

Not so long ago if I had received guidance to stop taking any of my medication or supplements, I would have seen it as a sacrifice. I would have thought that God was asking me to sacrifice now so that in the future I would be rewarded. I would have done it even if I was afraid, and I would have failed because my fear would have sabotaged it.

Even if I succeeded, I would have taught myself that I was guilty for taking them, that God wants my sacrifice, and that maybe part of the sacrifice is to die because I am not taking the pills. This is not the lesson Jesus wants me to learn and so the guidance did not come at that time. Instead, I was given different guidance that led me to practices which prepared me for my current guidance. Small, easy steps.

Some years ago I prayed that my allergies would be healed. I was allergic to just about everything in my environment and many foods. Some of my allergies were severe. I had allergies every single day, and I took medicine for them twice a day every day. I had to keep looking for new medicines because when you take one constantly, the body gets used to it and it doesn’t work anymore.

When I finally asked for healing I couldn’t imagine how this could happen. I had tried the shots and everything else I had ever heard of, but nothing worked. Nevertheless, I wanted to be healed of this constant misery. It was like having a cold every day of your life. I told Holy Spirit that I didn’t know how it could happen, but I wanted to be healed.

Within a few days a friend of mine called to say that she found someone who got rid of her allergies. This man was an alternative healer and she said that it was a simple treatment, but it seemed to have worked. I didn’t hesitate. I made an appointment and within two days of the treatment I didn’t have allergies anymore and they have never come back.

Why did I need an agent to heal me? Why not just have the allergies go away? Certainly this could happen. I think I was not ready for that healing. It’s hard for me to imagine I would have been afraid of the healing, and yet, I think it is true. I think that I was not ready at that time to let go of the idea that I really am not this body. I think at that time I would read the lesson that I am not a body as, I am not just this body. And I don’t think I was ready to know the truth.

I also don’t think I was ready to accept full responsibility for my allergies. I needed them to be caused by something outside of me. I still needed to be victim to things I couldn’t control. Full responsibility was too scary at that time. This would have caused me a lot of fear as well. But evidently, I was ready to accept that I was worthy of healing, and so the Atonement expressed in a way I could accept without fear. This, too, was a small, easy step that prepared me for much more.

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Study of the Text 1-16-13

1-16-13
4 All material means that you accept as remedies for bodily ills are restatements of magic principles. This is the first step in believing that the body makes its own illness. It is a second misstep to heal it through non-creative agents. It does not follow, however, that the use of such agents for corrective purposes is evil. Sometimes the illness has a sufficiently strong hold over the mind to render a person temporarily inaccessible to the Atonement. In this case it may be wise to utilize a compromise approach to mind and body, in which something from the outside is temporarily given healing belief. This is because the last thing that can help the non-right-minded, or the sick, is an increase in fear. They are already in a fear-weakened state. If they are prematurely exposed to a miracle, they may be precipitated into panic. This is likely to occur when upside-down perception has induced the belief that miracles are frightening.

I love how gentle Jesus is in this course of his. He knows that we have a lot of fear and he goes out of his way to be sure we don’t use the Course to increase that fear. I notice that when I read this part about maybe being in a fear-weakened state and so taking medicine for now, that ego wants to take that as a challenge. Or sometimes it wants to use it as a sign that I am guilty of not being better than that. But these kinds of ego ploys don’t work on me anymore. They are just thoughts passing through and find no hook in me so they don’t stay.

Jesus is very gently guiding me to let go of certain magic remedies. It is time for this because I no longer believe that I am victim to pain and sickness and I am comfortable accepting responsibility. I know that the body is an image projected from my mind and I know that pain and sickness are simply more images projected from a sick mind. This idea is not uncomfortable for me at all, and just awakens in me a strong desire to heal the mind. So now is a good time for me to start letting go of some of my crutches.

I am not going at this with a vengeance. I am just following guidance one moment at a time, and if I temporarily go back to magic solutions, I do so without guilt or concern. Taking medicine or not taking it is not cause for judgment. The ego, of course, wanted to set me up for failure as soon as I heard the guidance. It said that if I didn’t need one form of magic then I don’t need any and I should stop everything.

I let that thought sit for a moment because I wasn’t sure where it was coming from. But then I felt fear, small and mostly hidden, and knew the idea came from ego so I ignored it. At one time this process would have been miserable, and would have raised a lot of fear and guilt. That is why it is best not to try to take charge of my awakening but to allow it to gently unfold.

Yesterday I got a new thought related to this. I have been a real germophobe. I made that word up. I have always been afraid of germs and go to extremes to avoid contact. My kids share food from the same plate and even the same spoon and roll their eyes at me because I am aghast. If they thoughtlessly dip their spoon in my food, I just give it to them. They kindly try to remember not to do that.

When I go into a public restroom, which I do many times a day since I travel in my work, I carefully avoid touching anything and then wash my hands as if I have been rolling in germs. I carry disinfectant with me to hotels. I know all kinds of facts about germs and how long they live on surfaces. I’m not OCD about it but I am pretty neurotic. Anyway, yesterday I was washing up in a public restroom and carefully avoiding touching the faucet with my clean hands when I was given the thought to forgive this.

I was not given the thought to be careless or to stop acting like I must avoid germs. This would have definitely been too big of a step for me. I was told to simply forgive it. So every time now when I have a thought about germs I will remind myself that germs are just an image I have projected onto the world that I have also projected. This is the step I am to take. A tiny step forward, a gentle awakening to the truth.

I am so grateful to God. He loves me so much.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 1-15-13

1-15-13
3 Only the mind can create because spirit has already been created, and the body is a learning device of the mind. Learning devices are not lessons in themselves. Their purpose is merely to facilitate learning. The worst a faulty use of a learning device can do is to fail to facilitate learning. It has no power in itself to introduce actual learning errors. The body, if properly understood, shares the invulnerability of the Atonement to two-edged application. This is not because the body is a miracle, but because it is not inherently open to misinterpretation. The body is merely part of your experience in the physical world. Its abilities can be and frequently are over-evaluated. However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence in this world. Those who do so are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial. The term “unworthy” here implies only that it is not necessary to protect the mind by denying the unmindful. If one denies this unfortunate aspect of the mind’s power, one is also denying the power itself.

Before I started studying the Course I thought of the body as me, just as most people do. I could not envision my self without a body. Even when I imagined that I was in Heaven, it would be with a body, different maybe, better, but still a body. The church I attended believed that cremation was wrong because you needed the body when you got to Heaven. I must have had a glimmer of something else though, because when I thought about it I questioned how this could be true. What if a person burned to death? Did this mean he couldn’t go to Heaven? No answer from the church folks for that.

From A Course in Miracles I learned that I am not my body. I think in my enthusiasm to embrace this more sensible belief I went overboard. I made the error that Jesus speaks of here. I denied the body. I felt like it was wrong to give the body any attention whatsoever. It was very confusing because I had to find a way to reconcile passages in the Course that speak of sickness and healing with the idea that I am not a body, so why would I care about healing the body. It further confused the issue, because, of course, I wanted to be healthy and pain free.

Right here in the beginning of the Course Jesus makes it clear how we are to see the body. The body is a tool that we use while in this experience of separation. It is part of our experience. The body has no power to act on its own and only responds to the mind. It has no power to create. So the body cannot get sick, and if it seems to be sick it is because it is responding to the beliefs in the mind.

Obviously then, when we see the body as sick, when that is our experience, it is not the body that needs healing, but the mind. And if it is an error in the mind, a wrong-minded belief, that caused the illness to appear in the body, then a healed mind will facilitate the healing of the body. How did I know that I am holding an erroneous belief in my mind? One way may be that my body responded to that belief. So how do I know that belief has been healed? The body returns to its natural state of health.

I am reminded of something that happened to me one morning while writing in my journal. I was studying one of the lessons that says that I am not a body. I suddenly got it on a much deeper level. It was a revelatory moment, and the absolute knowing of something I had only previously understood as a concept stunned me.

Suddenly I got very sick. I had a fever and was throwing up. It was weird because the moment before I was fine. My first thought was that I had caught a virus from my granddaughter who had just recovered from one. Then I realized that the sickness was in response to the revelation I had just experienced. The ego part of the mind was terrified of the idea that I should actually know that I am not a body.

There was still a belief in my mind that I must protect the idea of being a body and so that belief was reflected in the body. A way for me to understand this is to think of it this way: The body did not make itself sick through getting a virus or something as I would have thought in the past. Instead, the ego mind projected onto the body sickness to reassure itself that its home still existed.

As soon as I understood what had happened, I started laughing. If anyone had seen me they would have thought I was nuts, because I was throwing up and laughing. The fever and the stomach upset disappeared very quickly. It was the shortest “virus” in history lasting only minutes. One thing that was made clear to me is that the body is not the source of disease.

It is the mind that is the cause and so it is the mind toward which healing should be directed. I had believed that I needed the body to be sick and it was. Then I realized that I did not need the body to be sick and the sickness disappeared. It would be a while longer before I was willing to accept the full implications of this experience, but it definitely was a defining moment for me. It was a necessary step that made it possible for me to later accept this truth more completely.

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Study of the Text 1-14-13

1-14-13
5 The children of God are entitled to the perfect comfort that comes from perfect trust. Until they achieve this, they waste themselves and their true creative powers on useless attempts to make themselves more comfortable by inappropriate means. But the real means are already provided, and do not involve any effort at all on their part. The Atonement is the only gift that is worthy of being offered at the altar of God, because of the value of the altar itself. It was created perfect and is entirely worthy of receiving perfection. God and His creations are completely dependent on Each Other. He depends on them because He created them perfect. He gave them His peace so they could not be shaken and could not be deceived. Whenever you are afraid you are deceived, and your mind cannot serve the Holy Spirit. This starves you by denying you your daily bread. God is lonely without His Sons, and they are lonely without Him. They must learn to look upon the world as a means of healing the separation. The Atonement is the guarantee that they will ultimately succeed.

I am a child of God. I have been created perfect and have been provided with everything I could possibly need. I lack nothing. I am loved, deeply and completely. I am worthy of all that I have been given. Nothing can change this. I am entitled to perfect comfort. All of this is mine, but to know this, and so to experience this, I must trust. To know it perfectly requires perfect trust.

When I try to comfort myself I am not trusting in God, and so I block the perfect comfort I am entitled to. How do I try to comfort myself? I look for someone to make me feel ok about myself. I try to prove I am ok by doing good works, by standing out from other people, by over achieving. I try to prove that I am worthy of God by sacrificing myself for Him.

I try to comfort myself by providing for the body, buying it pretty clothes and adorning it with jewelry, housing it in as much luxury as I can afford. I comfort myself with entertainment, books, movies, and other diversions. I use other people to keep it company and to prove the body is valuable as they cater to it and esteem it.

I try to comfort myself by providing security. I eat well to keep the body going longer and in better shape. I take it in for check-ups every year. I fortify the body with vitamins and give it medicine. I walk it around and exercise it occasionally. I try to make plans for its care as it gets older. I keep it in secure places with lots of locks so no one will hurt it. I even provide security for the things that I use to comfort the body so that these things will always be there, and the body will never lack.

And when all my hard work and effort comes for naught, which it must eventually do, I console myself with whatever thing I think might bring me solace. I take a pill, have a drink, cry on a shoulder, find someone to blame, even rant at God for failing me. This is so much work and at its best and most effective, falls far short of perfect, and never approaches dependable.

Trust is the solution. Perfect trust is the perfect and final solution. Only trust can bring me true comfort. And for this I do nothing. Comfort is given me because I am entitled to it. With all my efforting and willfulness, I have cut myself off from my comfort and have made myself afraid of that which will save me. I am in the peculiar position of having to convince myself to transfer my trust from the ego, which is not trustworthy, to my Creator Who is wholly trustworthy.

The solution has been given me in the Atonement. I know what to do with it. I know that the Atonement, to work perfectly, needs to be at the Altar, at the center of me, directing my awakening. I know that the Atonement is the way I become whole. I forgive the idea that I could ever be separate from my brothers and sisters, and that we could be separate from our Creator.

With the Atonement in the center of me, at the altar, the meeting place of God and His Son, all thoughts become purified as they pass through. What is not truth is removed, what is not real is left behind, and only love remains. It is simple and effortless. It is inevitable. What God created cannot be undone.

While I do this, while in the process of deciding for God, it doesn’t feel effortless. It sounds so lofty and so lovely when I talk about it, but when I am actually doing this, it doesn’t feel sweet and inevitable. It feels like work. It feels difficult. It sometimes feels like I can’t do it at all. But what I have discovered is that all the work and effort is an illusion. It appears hard because my trust is weak and unreliable and because in my fear and uncertainty, I judge everything I do.

I have done the hard part. I have placed the Atonement at the center. Now everything has to pass through the forgiveness process. What makes it seem hard is that as it passes through, the ego judges it. I should not have done this. I am guilty for that thought. I feel shame for some behavior. It makes me want to hide these thoughts instead of looking at them and letting them be forgiven. And so I go back to comforting myself. I eat some chocolate, or call a friend, or read a novel. I do this until I come to my senses and return to the source of my true comfort.

Holy Spirit, help me to look at my thoughts without judgment. Help me to remember that judging is your job. I know that you will judge right, and that your judgment will always be that the Son of God is innocent. Help me let go of my judgments about myself and others, and to remember to accept your judgment instead. I am lonely for God and want to be comforted.

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Study of the Text 1-11-13

1-11-13
2 A major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at all levels. Sickness or “not-right-mindedness” is the result of level confusion, because it always entails the belief that what is amiss on one level can adversely affect another. We have referred to miracles as the means of correcting level confusion, for all mistakes must be corrected at the level on which they occur. Only the mind is capable of error. The body can act wrongly only when it is responding to misthought. The body cannot create, and the belief that it can, a fundamental error, produces all physical symptoms. Physical illness represents a belief in magic. The whole distortion that made magic rests on the belief that there is a creative ability in matter which the mind cannot control. This error can take two forms; it can be believed that the mind can miscreate in the body, or that the body can miscreate in the mind. When it is understood that the mind, the only level of creation, cannot create beyond itself, neither type of confusion need occur.

I found this paragraph a little confusing at first so I am going to look at it closely. The first sentence says that the Atonement plan is to undo error at all levels. That is especially reassuring to me because I was, for a long time, confused about that. I thought that there was something wrong with expecting or wanting the effect, or the level of form, to change. Only fairly recently have I realized I was mistaken about this. All levels are to be undone.

The other statement which helps me to understand this idea of correction on all levels is that all errors must be corrected on the level that they occur, and also that only the mind is capable of error. So it is always the mind that must be healed, but the healing of the mind facilitates correction at the level of the physical, because all levels are to be corrected. I don’t have to worry about the body because it only responds to the mind, so heal the mind and the body will be healed.

The reason I get sick is because I am confused about this. There is a belief in the mind that the body can be creative and that something can happen within the body or any matter, and that the mind has nothing to do with it. In the past I believed that what happens to the body cannot be controlled by the mind. This is a very deep belief and even as I come out of that belief, it still tends to affect my thinking on more subtle levels.

I still believe that bacteria and viruses, for example, act independently of the mind. This means I must somehow protect the body against them using other forms of matter to do this (antibiotics, chlorine, Lysol, etc.) This completely overlooks the truth that the bacteria and virus are the product of the mind, just as is the body. The mind made the body and made the bacteria. Another way to think of this is that the body is in the mind, the bacteria is in the mind, and the error that matter (bacteria and body) acts on its own and cannot be controlled by mind is the cause of the physical symptoms.

This must be why Spirit has been urging me to remember that everything is in my mind. I have been practicing this with my Ambien, and with my headache pills. I have, through earlier practice watched as a lot of pain disappeared, but I was still taking the pain pills for headaches and sometimes for achiness or muscle tension at the end of the day.

For some reason I have decided to exempt these things from the idea that pain is not real. Of course I know this can’t be true, but I just let it slide rather than working with it. Now it seems that it is time for that to change. Also, even though I have proven to myself over and over that I no longer have the symptoms of sleep deprivation when I have insomnia (again through the practice of these principles) I still return to the idea that I need to sleep and to get a certain amount of sleep.

Very recently the thought came to me to use these two pills as a way to further practice the idea that all things are in my mind and that there is only an illusion of control outside my mind. One night when I was deciding whether I should take an Ambien, I had the clear thought that the body is in my mind and so was the idea that I could not sleep, and that maybe I would like to use this differently, to heal the error in my mind rather than to try to control the effect in the body. The idea extended to the pain pills as well.

I have done a lot of work with the idea that there is no pain and have seen the proof that the pain was not in the body but in my mind, and seen the pain disappear as I learned to believe this. Now I am watching the same thing happen with the sleep problems. I saw a lot of resistance to this idea in my mind but I am doing it anyway.

This is not a stubborn willfulness on my part, and in fact when, one night I felt trepidation about not sleeping and was sitting there thinking something like, “I will not take that pill!” I realized I should take it. I knew this should not become a battle in which the ego was determined to win. That was clearly not the point. I also noticed that night that I felt fear at the idea of not taking the pill. I only barely noticed it so I must have been hiding that from myself. I guess it didn’t fit my idea of the spiritual person I am to feel fear about it.

I am very excited about this next step in remembering the truth. Taking the pills or not taking them is not the point. What I am learning through this practice is that the mind is the only creative power in this world we made, and that it does not create beyond itself. So I look at the body and the world to see what I have believed that is contrary to this truth. Having seen and acknowledged the error, I return to the cause, which is mind, and forgive the thought that there is any creative power outside my mind. I ask the Holy Spirit to correct my thinking on this.

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Study of the Text 1-10-13

1-10-13

IV. Healing as Release from Fear
1 Our emphasis is now on healing. The miracle is the means, the Atonement is the principle, and healing is the result. To speak of “a miracle of healing” is to combine two orders of reality inappropriately. Healing is not a miracle. The Atonement, or the final miracle, is a remedy and any type of healing is a result. The kind of error to which Atonement is applied is irrelevant. All healing is essentially the release from fear. To undertake this you cannot be fearful yourself. You do not understand healing because of your own fear.

The sentence that really pops out for me is, “All healing is essentially the release from fear.” What this means to me is this. If I have a cold, I am healed as I let go of fear. If I don’t have enough money, I am healed as I release fear. If my relationship is in trouble, or if I lack the relationship I think I need, I am healed as I release fear. If I am emotionally or mentally disturbed, I am healed as I release fear. If I grieve, I am healed as I let go of fear.

It is no different if I am directing my prayers toward myself or someone else. If my child is sick, my friend in trouble, or the world is going to hell in a hand basket, I am healed as I release fear. And as I am healed, I heal. Nothing is required of me to be a healing force, other than a healed mind, and the mind is healed as fear is released.

The ego would have me get into the story and find a solution, or to pray for the solution that the story seems to demand, but healing is forgiveness, the recognition that there is nothing to forgive, and healing occurs naturally when the mind is healed of fear. So the story is irrelevant to the healing.

I heal as I release fear. I cannot effectively pray for you if I am in fear because I don’t understand healing. In that moment of fear I am confused and don’t know what I ask. Sometimes I am asked to pray for someone else and I notice that I cannot do so because every time I think of their problem, I realize it is my problem, too. I believe in their problem because it has a place in my mind. If I believe in their problem how can I pray for their release?

If my fear is triggered by someone else’s problem, here is what I do. I acknowledge the fear. I give the Holy Spirit all the willingness I have to release that fear and ask for His help. I rest in the certainty that healing always occurs to the degree I am willing to accept it. I repeat as needed, however many times that is. Each time I repeat, I become more willing to allow healing. When my fear has been released, I know that the “other” has been healed as well, and my certainty is my prayer.

One of the things I have noticed is that when I acknowledge the fear in my own mind and give my willingness to be healed, the ego offers me guilt for having the fear to begin with. I start the day off rejoicing in my sinless mind, and then as soon as I am tempted by fear I pick it up. The ego voice says something like this. I don’t deserve healing. It is hopeless. The ego then offers me many scenarios to prove I have so much to fear. This is the ego’s job. It is a fear monger and it writes stories, endlessly it writes stories.

Now I have a choice. I can fall into this old trap and follow the stories in my mind and get deeper and deeper into fear and guilt. Or I can acknowledge the guilt and fear in my mind once again, and again, ask for help in releasing them. Jesus has said he will not take our fear from us, but he will strengthen us as we let them go. I accept that fear and guilt have deep roots in my mind and that it may take patient repetition to achieve my release from its grip.

Another thing I have noticed is that this can be a simple, matter of fact process, or it can be frustrating and painful. The thing that decides which way it goes for me is judgment. If I judge myself for what I find in my mind, or if I judge myself for how long it takes to let it go, then I will suffer. If I notice the temptation to judge and immediately realize that this is just another ego deception and ignore it, then the process of forgiveness and healing goes rather more quickly and without so much discomfort. A prayer I often use is, “I acknowledge my thoughts without judgment.”

And here is another thing I have noticed. The longer I practice this, the easier it is and the shorter my forays into fear. But if I follow a fear story, there will always be another and another and another. Very quickly I will have lost sight of my objective and will be lost in the stories. So if I catch the story quickly and nip it in the bud, the process goes much faster and without the suffering that has been a part of it in the past. 

Jesus, my brother, you understand temptation because you experienced it in your own mind. You also know that it can be let go because you did it. I think of you standing on the hill and the ego offering you the world. I know that feeling, too. The ego offers me the world I made and the price is fear and guilt. Just accept it’s stories of fear and guilt and I can keep my illusory world and go on believing in it. Please today, Brother, lend me your strength and help me as I, like you, make my choice. Thank you. 

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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