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Study of the Text 8-28-12

8-28-12
  7 Miracles are everyone’s right, but purification is necessary first.

I often ask the Holy Spirit to purify my thoughts. I will notice that I am thinking thoughts that are not thoughts I think with God and so I ask the Holy Spirit to purify them, that is, to take from those thoughts all that is not truth. Right now there is a tropical storm in the gulf and at the moment it is headed right to New Orleans. It is due to hit on the 29th which is exactly when Katrina made landfall. The timing is creepy and my mind has been filled with thoughts about this.

Here is what I am thinking that is true. There is a tropical storm in the gulf that might hit New Orleans tomorrow. When it does there will be high winds and heavy rainfall. That is the only thing that is actually happening right now. There is nothing in that thought to cause undo alarm or worry. It is something to keep an eye on is all.

Now here are the thoughts that have been in my mind off and on since Monday.
  It has to be significant that this hurricane is predicted to make landfall on the anniversary of Katrina. (There are many, many thoughts that are triggered by that thought, and none of them are neutral to me.)
  Even if it does not turn into a hurricane the rainfall itself is enough to cause huge problems, maybe even disaster in New Orleans. They cannot pump water out of the city fast enough to keep up with a heavy rain much less a hurricane.  (New Orleans is practically an island sitting below sea level and its infrastructure is not up to date so things like the pumping system are inadequate)

  The levees built to keep the gulf and Lake Pontchartrain out of the city are antiquated as well and have proven to be weak and inadequate. They could give way and the city would be underwater and everyone there killed. (My son is one of those people and that thought is enough to send me into panic mode.)

  My son should leave right now, just in case. Something terrible is going to happen. I can’t stand the thought of the terror and panic that those who stayed would feel and in picturing this happening to my son I am able to vividly imagine this. I am helpless to influence the outcome and helpless to influence my son. I don’t want to be a fear monger, and I don’t want to teach fear, but I also want to do those things.

So which thoughts do you think are the thoughts I am thinking with God? Can you imagine God sitting around biting his nails, wishing He could influence people to panic and run? ~smile~  I don’t doubt that I am not the only one who has thoughts very similar to these right now, but that does not make them true thoughts. Could any of them happen in the story? Yes, they could. But no matter how dramatic and tragic the story becomes, it is still just a story. When things get tough I get to gauge my identification with the story.

There are two ways to experience these thoughts. The first is the way I have done in the past. I see the thoughts and believe them to one degree or another. The more I focus on these thoughts, the more likely they become. Eventually I feel compelled to act on them. Acting from fear is never a good idea and often when I have done so I regretted it. And acting from fear just increases fear and my belief in fear. I add to the ego.

The other way to experience these thoughts is to recognize them as ego thoughts and to give them to the Holy Spirit for purification. In doing this I am undoing the ego and adding to the Kingdom. I am teaching myself, and others through the example of my living fearlessly, that fear is not real.

As I allow the Holy Spirit to heal my mind, I realize that all the thoughts after the one fact of a tropical storm are just ego. As I focused on those thoughts I suffered, not from anything that is real, but from my thoughts about what is happening and when that’s not dramatic enough to hold my attention, the ego brings me thoughts about what could happen.

As the Holy Spirit purifies my thoughts my mind clears and becomes quiet. I am left with true thoughts and I remember that I am not living this story but observing this story. I watch the play with interest and I wait for instructions. Is there something for me to do? I won’t have to figure out what that should be, I will simply know.

The panic thoughts return again and again and I watch them, too. I know they do not originate with me, nor do they define me or in any way affect who I am. I am not a bad Course student because they appear in my mind. I am not dooming the Sonship to unending dreams of suffering because I notice these thoughts in my mind.  It is my purpose, my job to notice them and to allow them to be healed in the mind. They are nothing. They are meaningless.

I watch as Myron feels drawn to them and I see how believing an untrue thought causes so much suffering. There is only one useful thing to do with these thoughts and so I give them to the Holy Spirit when I notice them, and I ask Him, once again, to purify them. I do this over and over again as often as I am aware of the thoughts. Each time I do this I am healing the entire Sonship. I am chipping away at the ego belief system.

It is important that the purification take place because without it, the fear that fills the mind blocks the awareness of Love’s presence. Choosing fear over love is the same as saying, “No miracles, please.” Miracles are our right, but they are never forced on us and we can say no if we prefer the drama of the story. Choosing to give these thoughts to the Holy Spirit and asking Him to purify the mind is how we say yes to miracles.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 8-27-12

8-27-12
6 Miracles are natural. When they do not occur something has gone wrong.

Miracles should be natural and expected, and yet, when someone experiences a miracle it seems to be an extraordinary event.  So what constitutes a miracle? A miracle is something that surprises us by defying the laws of the world.

In the world we have laws that govern the body. We have laws that govern every little thing having to do with the body. If I go to the doctor and he says my body is riddled with cancer and tells me to get my life in order because there is no hope, then I could expect die. I’m not a doctor and may not be able to explain in scientific language the reason this is so, but everyone hearing about the situation would expect me to die.

If I were to refuse to accept the validity of those rules and choose life instead, and so were to have an immediate and total recovery, that would be called a miracle. It would be a miraculous recovery because it happened outside the laws of the world. There is nothing in those laws that explains or allows the body to do that.

Can this happen? Absolutely! Perhaps you have read the story of Anita Moorjani, who had this very experience. She wrote about it in her book, Dying to Be Me. How does something like this happen? It happens when we realize that we are under no laws but God’s. When we stop, at least for a moment, believing that we are a body with all its inherent limitations and laws, we experience something different.

Jesus says we can raise the dead and heal the sick because we made death and sickness. We are not bound to the laws of the world because those laws are immutable, but because we choose to be bound. We can be free of them simply by making another choice. So why cling to these rules which hold us hostage to sickness, suffering and death? Why indeed!

The miracle proves we don’t have to and Jesus tells us that we are not supposed to be bound to the world and its laws. What would have to occur to allow me to live a life of miracles? Well, I would have to let go of the laws of the world, and its those laws that seem to be all that prevents me being thrown into chaos.

What if gravity no longer held? What if time were not really an absolute and linear event? What if I woke up one morning to discover that I could reach out past my body, and I realized that familiar and “safe” boundary no longer existed for me? I was thinking how unsettling it is for me to be in a place I’ve never been. I once visited Mexico briefly. I was near the border and wanted to say I had been to another country and so we crossed the border and walked around for awhile.

I had never been to a place where no one understood the language I speak. I tried to communicate and couldn’t. Everything looked different. I didn’t know the rules here, not the rules of law so I could inadvertently get into legal trouble, nor the cultural rules, which were surely different than the ones I was familiar with, and so I might inadvertently offend.

I was very uncomfortable and my discomfort overcame my curiosity and so I left. I know that if I had stayed longer I would have discovered a new comfort level, something that I could live with, but I got something from that short visit that was more important. I discovered how disturbing it is when the familiar rules are no longer in force, when things are not as I thought they were.

This gives me an idea of why I might not freely embrace the idea of a life of miracles.  An occasional miracle might be ok, but if I were no longer bound by the laws I made up to govern my little kingdom, this could for awhile be very disturbing. This is why the Holy Spirit guides me gently and gives me little tiny steps to take as I travel that road.

As I let go of the idea that I am this body and that this world is my home, it becomes easier to let go of the rules that no longer apply to me. The screwdriver I am using slips and gouges out a bit of flesh on my finger and I grab it bracing myself for the pain. Then I remember that pain is not real and nothing happens. I don’t feel pain and I marvel that this could happen.

I am writing in my journal and the Holy Spirit is speaking to me through my writing. I am vaguely aware that I need to stop because I have an appointment, but I really want to finish so I give time to Him and trust that He will manipulate it to my advantage. I write for a long time it seems, but my trust holds and when I finish I look at the clock and almost no time has passed. I do my posting and get to my first customer right on time.

In little ways like this I am learning to accept that the laws of the world are meaningless. I put them in place and I can ignore them. These are small things, but they are piling up. The sheer volume of miracles are making an impact on my consciousness, and the less identified I am with the story, the body, the character of Myron, the less I seem to need the reassurance of those laws.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 8-24-12

8-24-12
5 Miracles are habits, and should be involuntary. They should not be under conscious control. Consciously selected miracles can be misguided.

One time I was with a customer and his wife. She had some very serious physical problems and was in a lot of pain. She was seated at a table and he was seated next to her. I went up to say hi to him and had the impulse to place my hand on her shoulder to allow healing to take place. My hand immediately became very warm and I felt some energy or something pass through me to her.

I don’t know why her or why then. I don’t know what that was for or why it was for me to do. I don’t know if it made a difference or if it did what that difference was. I was just following guidance. I wonder how often we make a difference to someone without ever being aware of it simply because we are in a state of miracle readiness, a desire to be used without interfering.

I showed up at a customer’s office one day expecting to visit with someone I liked and enjoyed being around. However, she was very unwelcoming and I suspected something was wrong with her. She gave off a strong vibe of wanting to be left alone and my every intention was to say hello-goodbye and leave. My brain was telling my body to turn when my mouth opened and I asked if she needed to talk.

She looked like she was about to send me on my way when suddenly, if not still a little reluctantly, agreed that she did. We went to the back room where we wouldn’t be disturbed and she shared some disturbing news, an upset both physical and emotional. I had no idea what to say. She is not a Course student or even someone I know on a personal level, which was a good thing because since Myron had nothing to say, she had to step back and let Spirit speak.

I wondered what I was supposed to say and it seemed that I was to say very little, and simply listen. Then I was directed to pray with her and Spirit gave me the words to use. Afterwards she expressed her gratitude and I knew that I had been helpful, not because of anything I did, but because of what I had allowed to happen through me. I was in a state of miracle readiness and everything else happened without my conscious assistance.

I’ve had this kind of experience often, but I have had the opposite experience also. I have had times when the ego mind decided it knew what was needed and what should be said. There is an arrogance to that kind of thought even when the arrogance is disguised as helpfulness. I think that miracles should not be consciously guided because that would mean thinking and the ego is in charge of that activity.

If I am ready and willing to be the vessel through which the miracle occurs, then that will happen smoothly, effortlessly, and perfectly. The miracle may happen without my awareness and often happens through me without my understanding of why or how. It’s all rather lovely.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 8-23-12

8-23-12
4 All miracles mean life, and God is the Giver of life. His Voice will direct you very specifically. You will be told all you need to know.
Ok, this is one of my favorite principles. It is my experience that I am being directed very specifically and told all I need to know. Since I started paying attention I am even more aware of this Voice. I don’t always discern directions but more often than not, I do. Sometimes I hear the direction and choose not to follow it. I don’t know why I do that because I always regret it. That Voice is for me, the instructions are always for my good.

I learned to listen first through writing. Keeping a journal while asking the Holy Spirit to guide my words set my intent and kept my attention focused long enough to get a clear answer. I had to get past the belief that only special people hear the Voice for God, and that I was not deserving of this communication. 

I also had to let go of the belief that It came and went and that sometimes for some strange reason It was quiet. The Holy Spirit told me that He speaks to me all through the day as the lesson says, and that it is I who fails to listen at times. I also had to let go of my expectations of what It would sound like or rather how I would experience this Voice. For me it is a thought that comes through the mind but not from the mind, a thought Myron would not have had. Sometimes I go back and read His message from a past journaling and it is like I am reading it for the first time.

Reading NTI and the Inner Ramana has helped me to practice focusing my attention on that Voice rather than on the ego voice, to let go of self will so I could embrace the Will of God that is my true will. Now I hear the ego less and recognize it more quickly. The best change is that I don’t usually get upset when I am aware of the ego voice, don’t think it means anything. I just ask that the Holy Spirit heal that thought in the mind.

I am going into detail about my experience about learning to hear the Voice for God and learning that I want to follow Its direction knowing it always wants only my good, because I want everyone to know that this is available to you whenever you are ready for it. Everyone can hear this Voice and everyone is meant to.

We are given this Helper because God wants us to return to our Self. God wants us to live and what we are experiencing now is not life. We pretend to be born and we pretend to live, then we pretend to die. All the while Life continues unabated and death is a strange concept that is unknown to Life. But while we are caught up in our stories of separation Life continues outside our awareness, and so we suffer an imaginary but painful separation from our Father. We don’t have to, and it is this Helper, this Voice for God, that will direct us very specifically to gently undo what we have done so we can return Home.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 8-22-12

8-22-12
2 Miracles as such do not matter. The only thing that matters is their Source, which is far beyond evaluation.

When I first read this I had to wonder why I was studying a whole course in miracles if miracles did not matter. But now I understand that it is the Love that sources the miracle that is important. As we continue to uncover the love that we are, our memory returns. Once that happens we eagerly return to our Source and there will no longer be a need for miracles. It is Love that is eternal and so Love that matters. But right now, it is our destiny to live a miraculous life.

3 Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.

It took awhile, but eventually I figured out that I didn’t know the first thing about love. When the course talks about love it is not talking about the secret bargains we make with each other in an effort to trade the little we believe we have for what we think we need that the other person seems to have. Nor is it talking about the victim/victimizer relationship, where one gives “selfless” love in the hopes of receiving an undeserved response, and a sense of power and control.

The Course isn’t even talking about feeling in love, or feeling love for some specific object of our affection. This is the love that we are. It cannot be contained. It cannot be aimed at one but withdrawn from another. It simply is, and is without limits or boundaries. It has no conditions. There is no place it is not.

We have imagined that we have made a place where love cannot go, and then imagined something to take its place, a pale and pitiful substitute that meets the restrictions that separation places on all things. But this can only be true in our imaginations. In truth, love cannot be destroyed or limited. It is eternally itself, undiminished and undivided.

It is this Love that is the Source of all miracles. As we uncover the Love that we blocked from our awareness, the effects of this Love begin to blossom in our life as miracles. After living in the darkness of separation, any bit of love we uncover is a miracle and as we uncover more and more our life becomes alight in this love, and miracles abound.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 8-21-12

8-21-12
I. Principles of Miracles

1 There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not “harder” or “bigger” than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love are maximal. 

Jesus started off with a bombshell. This just blew up all my preconceived ideas about miracles, and about life in general. Certainly, I had always assumed that it would be a greater miracle to raise the dead than it would be to cure a headache. I mean, who wouldn’t? This is a world of separation, differences, and contrasts. And my resistance to this idea has been strong and persistent.

I am finally beginning to see things differently, and the reason I can do this now is that I understand the last sentence. All expressions of love are maximal. Miracles are an expression of love and there are no degrees of love. Love is whole, eternal, and unchanging. Love heals and it doesn’t require more love to heal bigger errors.

The reason for this is two-fold. The first is because love is complete in itself; there is neither more nor less of love. This is hard for us to understand because there is nothing in this world we can hold to that standard. I can’t think of a metaphor because what would I use? There is no meeting place between the world and reality.

The second reason this is true is that there are no bigger errors. Cancer is not a bigger error than a headache. It appears so but appearances are not the truth. All forms of suffering occur because of an untrue belief. Beliefs don’t come in sizes. I believe that pain is real, or I believe that pain is not real. I simply choose the belief that I want to be real, and what I believe is true for me.

One of the reasons it has been hard for me to accept this idea is that I still seem to have use for some forms of suffering. Before I can let go of the idea of suffering, I have to realize why I value it, and then I have to change my mind about that. I have to realize that suffering does not actually get me what I want. I do this by asking the Holy Spirit to heal me when I see this belief in my mind.

The Holy Spirit has been working on this with me. This year when I read Lesson 190, which says that it is my thoughts alone that cause me pain, and that nothing external to my mind can hurt or injure me in any way, it seems that I was ready to go deeper into this lesson. The Holy Spirit used physical pain to teach me that this is true.

I opened my mind to the possibility that this is meant literally for all forms of pain. Into the crack I made in my firmly held belief that pain was caused by something outside me, the light of truth began to permeate my thoughts. I became willing to see differently.

It took months of looking at my beliefs and allowing love to heal me before I began to generalize the lesson. At first I thought of the different kinds of pain as being different because they felt different. Some felt worse than others. Some seemed to be connected to one thing and some to another and so I thought they were different.

What I eventually discovered is that none of these differences mattered because they were just the way my belief took form. One of the reasons it was time to go more deeply with Lesson 190 is that I was beginning to accept that I was not the self I had always assumed as my identity. I was starting to believe that I am Self, and that Myron was not real. So when I read the following lines, I was more open to receiving them.

But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs.

With this promise in mind I found another passage in this lesson that served as a mantra I could use when I became aware of a thought in my mind that came from a belief in pain. Any time I felt physical pain or emotional pain, I would use that moment as an opportunity to remind myself of the truth by reciting my mantra, with a willingness to accept it as true even if I did not currently believe it.

If God is real, there is no pain. If pain is real, there is no God.

As I used that mantra over and over I saw the miracle take form. The miracle was the change in my belief, and the form was the pain dissolving right before my eyes. I saw this happen many times.

But pain is such a useful belief that I would pick it back up over and over again. Because I am ready to learn this lesson, the Holy Spirit is helping me to see the value I place in the belief in pain. I noticed one day that I use sickness to get out of things I don’t want to do, so I stopped doing that. I changed my mind as I realized what this cost me.

He showed me how I use pain to get attention from those who I thought were not giving me what I needed in attention and affection. That was an embarrassing revelation, but I forgave myself and accepted the benefits of letting that go. There was another whole lesson there that I will talk about another time.

Yesterday, I had a headache and this is a form of pain that I have not given up. I know it is not any bigger or different than any other form of the belief in pain and I think because I have a magical solution for it, and because it is bearable, I decided to keep this one for the value it has for me. As that realization was given me, I asked Holy Spirit to help me see why I was choosing pain over love this time.

Suddenly I had the thought that I was working late and that I was very tired and feeling put out. I felt like the company demanded too much of me, and that they should not expect me to work extra hours. It was a lot of thoughts along that line. Then I noticed the feeling that came with these thoughts and realized that I felt like a victim. It was a “poor me” feeling, and I blamed the company and my boss, because projection is the way we get out of responsibility and how we avoid change here in the world.

As soon as I saw the reason for holding onto this form of pain, I returned to my mantra. I remembered that sickness is a decision I make. I remembered that nothing can be done to me, but only by me. I remembered that pain is not real so I must be imagining this and now I understand my motivation for doing so, I choose to let it go. I am not a victim of the world I see and I cannot really believe that anymore. It is just a habit I fall back into from time to time.

With a simple change of mind, love healed me. My mind was healed, and the form the madness took (this time a headache) dissolved away into nothingness. The ego questions this, saying I am just asking for worse pain, that I would not find this so easy if it were a serious illness, but I hold that Jesus meant what he says in the Course. He said that there is no order of difficulty in miracles and that all expressions of love are maximal. I believe him.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 8-20-12

8-20-12
INTRODUCTION

1 This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.
 
2 This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:

Nothing real can be threatened. 

Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God. 

From the very beginning I see that free will is different than what I thought it was. The world was made as a place I could pretend that I am free to be something I am not, but it is a finite experience. I must awaken from the dream of separation because that is the Will of God, which is also my will. I cannot remain forever separate from my reality and so I must one day take a course in miracles. When I do this is up to me. I am free to play in a world of experience for as long as I can stand the pain.

To have an experience that is different from reality I needed to block reality from my mind, otherwise the experience would not feel real. Since reality is Love, I have hidden love from my awareness and now must uncover it. It feels like I am learning what it means to love so different is the experience of love as we see it in the dream, but as the introduction to the Course says, love is beyond what can be taught.

Through the study of A Course in Miracles, I am learning to remove the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence. First I have learned to recognize those blocks in my mind; the belief in guilt, fear, pain, suffering and death. I am learning to recognize them in all the forms in which they appear in this story of Myron’s life.

The next step is to realize that I don’t want them anymore. It is hard to believe that I could value experiences that are so painful but it seems that I have done so and sometimes still do. I have clung tenaciously to my dream existence, insisting that I can dream a happier dream, a better dream, a different dream. I can rearrange this one with a different decision. I can learn from my mistakes and gather more information, get smarter, finally meet the right person, earn more money, find the key to happiness within the dream. And if this doesn’t do it for me, then I’ll try again in a different life, a different form and personality.

I am like a child having the most amazing play-day ever with all my friends. We are dressing up in an incredible array of costumes and are taking on the personas that go with the bodies we have chosen for this act in the play. Every experience is so real it is easy to forget that I am not that. And like a child who has over stayed her curfew, and who has done something not allowed, I feel guilty and fearful of facing my Father. It seems the only thing to do is to stay in the play and bury my fear under more and more experiences, trying to forget my belief that I am in trouble.

This sense of guilt and fear are the blocks that keep me unaware of my Father’s unconditional and unending love. They are the blocks that keep me from remembering my true Self. So these are the blocks I am learning to recognize in their many guises, and these are the blocks I am deciding that I don’t want anymore.

That the Course came into my life and I picked it up and kept reading past the introduction; that I have practiced it and embraced its hopeful promise, is the way I know that I am ready to wake up from this dream of separation. And A Course in Miracles is the way I have chosen to do it. Or perhaps, the way that has chosen me.

When I first read the introduction I didn’t understand it at all. If fear is the opposite to love (and really, how is that true?) then how could love then have no opposite? And nothing real can be threatened? Everything I ever thought of as real could be threatened, and I had so much proof that this was true because of all the loss I had suffered in my life.

Nothing unreal exists? Well, yeah. But what did that mean? It was all such nonsense that I didn’t even try to figure it out. And yet, I read it over and over, returning to it like a metal filing to a magnet. With the ego mind I was working with at the time I was unable to understand what was being said, but there was a deeply guarded memory in my mind that was being tickled awake as I read those enigmatic words.

The ego didn’t understand them, but I was to discover that I am not the ego and “I” know exactly what they mean. That memory pulled me along and kept me reading even though the ego self I was so thoroughly identified with was mystified as to why I wanted to study this book. A Course in Miracles is not the only path home. There are thousands to choose from, but it is the path I am to take, and I am deeply grateful to have found it.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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