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Study of Manual for Teachers 7-29-12

7-29-12
7 And now God’s knowledge, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here they join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time’s final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God’s memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever.

This is the second paragraph to mention the altar to the Son of God. I notice that I wanted to skip over that sentence both times. It did not feel personally meaningful to me, and the reason it didn’t is because I was trying to take it personally. The altar to the Son of God is the altar to our Oneness, our Wholeness. There is no personal in that Self. Personal would mean mine as opposed to someone else. There is no one else, and you see in the next sentence it says, “God knows it as His Own.” There is only One, Father and Son.

This is our ultimate goal, to let go of the idea of separate selves and all the effects that this belief carries with it. No more bodies, no more belief in sin and guilt and death. Perception, good and bad will no longer have a place in the mind because it will not be needed.  The journey will have ended as we remember God, and the world and all it seems to be will disappear into Him.

This is the ultimate goal, but now my goal is to bring to the altar all that is not true, all that blocks the awareness of Love’s presence in my mind so that it can be healed by the Holy Spirit. This seems to be my part. The final step is taken by God, and so I don’t need to do anything about that. For a time yet, I will focus on forgiving all that is given me to forgive, and allowing my thoughts to be purified. It is enough and seems to keep me pretty busy.

This morning I woke up feeling… something other than peaceful, joyful. I asked Holy Spirit to look with me at my thoughts. I saw immediately that I felt like I was sacrificing my time. I asked if that could be true. Yes, I am busier than ever but is it a sacrifice to do what I came to do? Is it a sacrifice to join with others, to share the Holy Spirit? The more I share the Holy Spirit, the stronger His Voice in me. How could that be a sacrifice? Then I realized that the ego was just bringing me disturbing thoughts again. I left those thoughts on the altar.

Thank you, Holy Spirit.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 7-28-12

7-28-12
6 This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear. For there the altar to the Son is set, and there his Father is remembered. Here are all illusions brought to truth and laid upon the altar. What is seen outside must lie beyond forgiveness, for it seems to be forever sinful. Where is hope while sin is seen as outside? What remedy can guilt expect? But seen within your mind, guilt and forgiveness for an instant lie together, side by side, upon one altar. There at last are sickness and its single remedy joined in one healing brightness. God has come to claim His Own. Forgiveness is complete.

“This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear.” This sentence is so clear to me right now. Everything I see outside me is merely a reflection of a thought within the mind. Keeping it outside me is how I protect it from healing. Bringing it back within is how it is forgiven and healed.

Here is an example that occurred to me this morning. There is a belief in the mind that says sickness, suffering and death are real. When that belief is rejected in an effort to escape the guilt and fear it brings, it appears as form in the world. Sometimes it appears as sickness in the body.

When this has happened to me, the guilt and fear that I felt for holding those beliefs was greater than the suffering I seemed to experience from the sick body, thus making sickness the lesser of the evils. While I held that belief I was unwilling to forgive and accept healing, at least not as long as healing meant withdrawing my illusions and acknowledging the belief I was holding in my mind.

As I continued my practices and my willingness to heal became stronger than my fear, I began to withdraw my projections. It happened as I began to use the experience of pain as an opportunity to remember the truth. With each pain I reminded myself that pain cannot be real. God is all there is and God is not pain. I must be making this up. I continued to do this regardless of any seeming results in the world. I stopped looking at the story for proof that I am as God created me.  I was beginning to understand that the story will never tell me who I am, it will only tell me who I am not.

The more I did this the stronger my certainty became, and I watched as the truth unfolded before me. It didn’t need my help, only my permission. I didn’t have to do anything in the world to make this happen, and in fact, when I try to make the truth happen I am actually pushing the truth away in favor of another ego story.

I didn’t have to meditate on it. I didn’t have to stop taking medicine to prove my worthiness of the miracle, nor did I have to take medicine to make it happen. I need do nothing to make the truth true. All that is required of me is the desire for the truth. I reminded myself that I wanted the truth to be true and it showed itself to me.

Using the metaphor of the altar, I noticed the effects of the belief in pain, suffering and death as they appeared in my life. This specific appearance was pain. At first I tried to bring light to the darkness by asking for healing of the body. Then I realized my error and brought my dark thoughts about pain (the belief that pain is real and deserved) to the light.

I placed the false thought on the altar. The Holy Spirit placed forgiveness next to it so for a moment I could see them together. Then the light replaced the darkness and I understood that the pain could not be real and that I am innocent. That particular expression of the belief in pain no longer appeared in the body because I could not believe in it anymore. Apparent healing of the body is simply a natural consequence of healing in the mind.

My experience has been that sometimes it takes many experiences of bringing the dark thoughts to the altar for me to see this lesson as true in each case. It begins with a specific circumstance and perhaps this will be repeated with other specific circumstances, but with repetition the lesson becomes generalized. What seems to happen next is that when I have pain, regardless of where it originates or appears to manifest, my first thought is to bring it to the altar. Instead of feeling difficult and confusing it seems simple and natural, and impersonal.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers7-27-12

7-27-12
5 A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty.

I have heard people say that they wish they weren’t here, that they don’t belong here and that they never wanted to be here. I understand that because I used to feel the same way. Well now we know what to do about it. If you think that the world is hell and you want it to disappear, all you have to do is forgive it. Then, poof, it’s gone.

That is what forgiveness is. It is the understanding or the awareness that something is not possible. The world cannot be possible because it is an effect of the separation belief, and separation is not possible. It is not possible because it was not created by God as an extension of Himself. When I accepted that one obvious fact that I had managed to overlook all my life, that is, only God is real and only His extensions share His reality and everything else is a dream, when I realized that was true, it became easy to tell reality from illusion.

God is perfect Love.  God is Wholeness. He is changeless and eternal. Right away we can cross out bodies which are none of those things. So the body I think of as me cannot be me. The earth is none of these things so we can cross that out along with the rest of the universe. I notice I don’t want to write that last part because I always held out hope for the universe, thinking that somehow it is real and will last but just in a more benign state. But it doesn’t fit the definition so I am letting it go.

Pain, fear, suffering, heartache, disappointment, rejection, all going the way of the body and the world. There can be no reality in any of it because none of it is in God. When I feel any of these things I must be dreaming of something else. These things cannot be real. Oh and the scariest illusion of all is death and unless God can die, then I cannot die either since I am an extension of God. Only the body can die and it does not exist. So both body and death are a thought in the mind and nothing at all.

I’m going to take a little trip soon and I will be driving through some hills and maybe some small mountains and I feel trepidation at the thought. I have always been very afraid of heights and the fear has gotten worse. The mind says that I must believe in death and I must believe I am a body or I would not be afraid. It makes a kind of sense and I am tempted to believe this and return to defending myself from situations that endanger the body as if it were real.

But then I remember that I am not the body because I cannot be the body. The body is temporal and I am eternal being an extension of God Who is eternal. I cannot die and why do I care if an illusion seems to stop? The personality of the character I am identified with in this little story that only seems to be my life is afraid of heights for some reason. The phobia is just part of the story and has no reality and nothing to do with me. It can be useful in helping us wake up to the truth, but usefulness does not imbue it with reality.

Maybe this story ends with Myron no longer afraid of heights. Maybe not. The story can be just a story, or it can be the way out of the world all depending on what I want to do with it. My choice lies in whether or not I want to use the story to forgive the world. That is definitely my choice this time. So when I notice fear thoughts about heights I use that as an opportunity to remember the truth. Heights are not real, but are part of the construct of the illusion, part of space which is not real, but just a useful element to prove separation.

I remember that fear is not real. It is just a thought, a belief. It cannot be real because God is not afraid. If God is not afraid then I cannot be afraid either. Being His extension, I cannot be what God cannot be. So I must not be afraid. I must only be choosing an experience of fear. How odd. I seem to have convinced myself that this is real and since it is real, I as body/personality am real. Well I suppose I would have to if I want the experience. It wouldn’t be much of an experience if I didn’t believe it.

Odder still is that I can hold onto this fear in the face of what I now know. Perhaps Myron will let it go. We will see. Either way it does not affect the truth of who and what I am. That has been my mistake all alone, to look at the world and all the effects of the separation idea and use that criteria to identify myself and to make decisions. I may still be somewhat confused by what I see when I look in that direction, but I cannot ever again really believe it, and I will never again believe I am that regardless of the feelings that are part of my chosen experience.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers7-26-12

7-26-12
4 The world stands like a block before Christ’s face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came.

When I was confused about the world and was convinced it was real, it was so solid in my mind that I could not perceive it to be anything except the truth. At first before my mind began to change I was exposed to the truth but, though it was attractive, it seemed like science fiction or like the fascinating fantasy novels I am so fond of. Then as my mind began to clear, I knew the world could not be what it seemed but I still believed what I saw for the most part.

I wanted to know the truth, but I just couldn’t let go of the idea that a world that looked and felt so real could be an illusion. Of course I was looking and feeling with a body that was part of the illusion, but I couldn’t completely accept that. It was funny, really, because I could say I believed what the Course told me, and I thought I did, and yet I still reacted as if the world were real.

I cared about what happened in the world, and especially what happened to Myron as if they were real and mattered deeply. I still acted as if I were Myron was in charge of deciding what to do and her decisions affected the course of events. Finally, one day I realized how absurd all this was, and now when I think about it, I can’t believe how fully I accepted all this as truth and how hard it was to see that the world is not real.

But some time during the day I will again become temporarily confused and then will suddenly remember the truth and will laugh at myself. Probably this will happen more than once, but maybe not. I have no idea what will happen next. And isn’t that delicious. I used to think happiness was being in control and actually trying to control this illusion is folly and only causes stress. I bet that’s why the body ages and dies; all that stress from trying to do the impossible.

Now I see that happiness is knowing it’s not my personal job to keep the universe in its proper place. I thought I was supposed to wake up at 6:00 this morning, but obviously that was not so. It was the first surprise of the day to discover that I was supposed to wake up at 7:00. For a moment the mind was in charge again and was scrambling to figure out ways to get back in control of the day.

How could I make the time conform to my schedule or failing that, how could I make my schedule conform to a day that is going to be an hour shorter than my schedule allows for. Then I shrugged off the ego and gave the whole idea that I know what anything is for to the Holy Spirit for healing. I trust it will all work out as it should and I am watching with interest to see what that looks like.

Holy Spirit, the veil is indeed thin and insubstantial. I will never cease to be amazed that I could have failed to see through it for so long. Still, I know that I still become confused at times. I feel like someone who has awakened from a heavily drugged sleep and still falls back into their dream off and on while they fight off the effects of the sleep. If this happens today, help me to not take it seriously.

This personality I have chosen for the story of Myron has a tendency to take herself too seriously. It has been such a long time that guilt has been the guiding force for us that I fall back under its sway too easily, and then for a bit I know I’m confused but forget why. Teach me to laugh at the mind’s foolish beliefs when this happens and this will help me to see with clarity once again.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 7-25-12

7-25-12
3 Knowledge is not the remedy for false perception since, being another level, they can never meet. The one correction possible for false perception must be true perception. It will not endure. But for the time it lasts it comes to heal. For true perception is a remedy with many names. Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. They are the one beginning, with the end to lead to Oneness far beyond themselves. True perception is the means by which the world is saved from sin, for sin does not exist. And it is this that true perception sees.

We do not receive Knowledge (note the capital K) while here but we do receive true perception as we are ready to accept it. I have said before many times that if I stop thinking for myself that knowledge would be given me. This is true because I use the word knowledge (without the capital k) to mean it is something that comes to me from outside the thinking mind. I don’t figure it out on my own, it is just given to me. This would be true perception.

It is very hard for us to stop using our thinking mind to make decisions and to figure things out. We have elevated thinking to such a point that we tend to worship intelligence and education above other things except maybe exceptional athletics and beautiful bodies. Do you notice what all our idols have in common? They are all symbols of ego, that is, symbols of separation.

It is very possible to stop using the thinking mind. It is fairly useless anyway. The intellect is just another word for a filing cabinet. It stores whatever bits of information we gather from other filing cabinets and makes it available to us to re-use, at least as long as the file clerk (brain) doesn’t fall down on the job. This was a perfect plan for the ego who is interested only in self perpetuation. As long as we are interested in this closed system we will never choose God instead.

I began my practice of breaking the information cycle by asking the Holy Spirit for His opinion once I had made my decision. Slowly I shifted a bit and began to ask Him before I made a decision. The final step is to ask Him for the decision. It wasn’t complicated. I just asked, “What would you have me do?” The answer I would hear would depend on how much I wanted to relinquish my own decision-making process.

I still go back to deciding on my own. It’s a hard habit to break. Only now I often notice and just laugh at myself. It’s so pleasant not to go through that cycle of guilt. The one that says I should have remembered. What I have learned is that I’m not supposed to train myself to do something or not do something. I just learn what I truly want, and the change happens without my effort.

I keep ambien with me and when I have those weird nights I can’t go to sleep, or if I am in a hotel with a convention of noisy drunks or giggling, screeching school kids, I have a ready solution. More than once the ego has suggested I should not be relying on magic solutions, but I have learned not to listen to ego and I am not interested in its offerings of guilt. I just wait to see what Holy Spirit has to say.

Last night I got a room near the front desk and next to the elevator. In the past when something like this happened I would go into my victim routine and bemoan my bad luck until the ego convinced me it was my just punishment for my evil deeds. Instead I waited to see if it was even going to be a problem. It was a pretty noisy place so I asked what I should do. No clear answer, so I took the ambien.

I had another reason as well. I have been trying to train my body to go to sleep earlier so I would have more writing time before I have to leave for work. So I take the pill as early as I can to get my body to sleep earlier so it will wake up earlier. (I don’t like to be jarred awake by alarms so I just work with the time I have when I wake naturally.) I have tried this before and it works for awhile then my body reverts to its preferred sleeping pattern.

So here I am trying once more to get a full night’s sleep and to get to sleep earlier. Again ego pointed its boney little finger of shame, but I ignored that. Then an interesting happened.  The ambien worked but not until my normal sleeping time. This is not usual. I’m pretty sensitive to the ambien and even though it is a low dose I can only take about a third of one. So it is usually a very dependable method.

As I’m lying there watching this happen I wonder why it is not working as planned. The thought came into my mind that perhaps I could be using these mornings to learn to allow the Holy Spirit to arrange time for me instead of trying to do it myself through magical means. It might have been the ambien which makes me kind of goofy, but I said, “Holy Spirit, is that You? That sounds like something You would say.” I went to sleep giggling.

How lovely it will be to let go of trying to control my sleep cycle and to even make the decision that I need to do this. I just bypass the mind entirely, and allow myself to be lifted and carried. Funny ego thinks I should feel guilty for relying on Holy Spirit for everything (like I’m going to wear Him out) and that I should make these decisions myself. That has been its story all along, but it was an error to listen to that voice and it led to misperceptions.

Now I am learning to ask for reinterpretations of everything, absolutely everything, and it’s very exciting! I have discovered that it feels good and natural to relinquish my desire to be in charge and to allow myself to be carried. I am being taught, or maybe the better word would be given, true perception as I allow it. Thank you, Holy Spirit.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 7-24-12

7-24-12
2 The body’s eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. And so they do. For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt.

As I look around I realize that nothing I see, no matter how beautiful or how horrific, is real. If I can see it with my eyes it does not exist. It is something I made up in mind and the only place it exists is in imagination. A thought so vivid I came to believe it is real, and it is me.

What this implies is that there is something real to be “seen” but it is seem differently, not with the body’s eyes that were made to show me my thoughts rather than reality. I wanted to have thoughts about something unreal, something impossible, and I wanted to experience this, so part of that process was to make separate bodies and equip them with eyes that report to me what I imagine. So what I see is not real but it is, rather, what I want to experience as real.

I wonder what is real. I wonder what stands beyond what the eyes can see.  I wonder what the real world is. I wonder what it is like to see without the eyes. I don’t stay with this idea too long because I have enough to do just learning to accept that I don’t “see” now.  I had one of those moments yesterday.

As I was getting ready for work I noticed I felt unhappy, and anxious. I asked Holy Spirit to look with me at my thoughts. I saw a resistance to ending the weekend and going back to work. I allowed that and asked to see more. I became aware of thoughts of my boss. He has been depressed and this affects his decisions and his reactions. His body has been sick and seems to be getting worse and worse. I thought of all the symptoms and wondered about what they might mean.

I had what seemed to be a random thought. I remembered that I am not what I seem and that to know what I am I must ask God. The body and the world will not show me the truth, but only the ego perception of separation. I thought that I was just remembering the idea from yesterday that I will not know the truth about myself by asking the ego. That means don’t look at my body, my relationships, my financial situation and judge what I am by what I see.

Then in a flash I realized this was not a random thought. This was the Holy Spirit’s answer to my dark thoughts. I was looking at my boss and seeing his body and defining him by what my eyes showed me. I had a very clear thought: Don’t ask the ego what he is. Don’t look to his body to define him. He is not that. I laughed at how perfectly the Holy Spirit led me to that answer simply because I asked. I laughed at myself for expecting the body’s eyes to show me the truth. I laughed in joy that all I saw was not real.

I cannot imagine what the real world looks like, but I can become aware that the world I do see is an illusion. This world will always show me sin and guilt because it was made from the idea of sin and guilt, but because it is not real what it shows me is not real. As I am willing to accept this, I can ask to be guided from the illusion to truth.

What I see will continue to report back to me what I ask for. When I got to work my experience with my boss was entirely different than I feared and that is because I was shown a truer way to see. It is not the real world but it is the illusory world reinterpreted. It is a step closer to reality and so it is a happier illusion because it is closer to what God created, and what God created is without sin and guilt.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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study of Manual for Teachers 7-23-12

7-23-11
4. TRUE PERCEPTION - KNOWLEDGE
1 The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end. 

The world I see is not real. That is the answer to all the ego separation stories. That is my salvation and my happiness. In the past every time I felt uncertain or uneasy about myself I looked at the story of Myron to see how I was doing. Did I say an unkind thing to someone? Did I forget someone’s birthday and so hurt her feelings? How about all those thoughts in my mind? Are they evil thoughts, unkind thoughts, fearful or guilty thoughts?

The story always gave me proof that I was guilty and had reason to be afraid. After all, the guilty are inevitably punished so I had every reason to live in dread. My life and my mind “proved” to me that I was in trouble. No wonder I felt uneasy and uncertain. I was always waiting for the hammer to fall.

A Course in Miracles tells me over and over that I am innocent. Yet, when I look at the story I see proof that I am guilty. Who will I believe? Will I believe the author of the story, the ego? Or will I believe the author of A Course in Miracles, Jesus. The Course says when we want to know what we are we ask the only thing in the universe that does not know. We ask our story, we ask the ego.

Well, the story is not real. It is transient, a passing thought in the Mind of the sleeping Son on God. I will awaken and the story will have dissolved; only momentarily remembered and then forgotten. The story is not real and proves nothing. Instead of looking to the story to see how I am doing, let me ask One Who Knows. The Holy Spirit will always judge me innocent.

As I have become more and more willing to accept His judgment, I see the insanity of believing in anything that is not God. God is not guilt, or fear or anger. God is not depression or sadness. He is not cruelty or sickness, suffering or death. God is not pain. I am created as an extension of God, in God, part of God. I cannot be anything God is not. I accept that simple truth and turn my face from the ego judgment. Why would I believe in an illusion? Why would I believe the flimsy proof of an illusory story over the certainty of God?

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