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Study of Manual for Teachers 8-2-12

8-2-12
3 In his complete identification with the Christ - the perfect Son of God, His one creation and His happiness, forever like Himself and one with Him - Jesus became what all of you must be. He led the way for you to follow him. He leads you back to God because he saw the road before him, and he followed it. He made a clear distinction, still obscure to you, between the false and true. He offered you a final demonstration that it is impossible to kill God’s Son; nor can his life in any way be changed by sin and evil, malice, fear or death.

The statement that stands out to me is that Jesus made a clear distinction between the false and true. This is where we are all headed. It is the reason for the reading, the studying, the processes and practices. We want to learn to tell the difference between the false and the true. I notice this happening right now for me.

It was always happening but I didn’t see it so clearly before. I was still learning to see specific things differently, and that was my focus. That was good as it was an important step of the path, and helped me to eventually generalize these lessons. At first I had to notice that I was seeing everything as either guilty or innocent. Then I embraced the idea that I wanted to see everyone as innocent.

This step took a long time for me as I struggled with how to do this. No matter how hard I tried to do otherwise I was judging some people (especially myself) as guilty and then trying to see them as innocent. But I kept working on it (building my willingness) and eventually there was a shift and I realized that everyone is innocent and nothing they did could change that.

Then one day there was another shift. I realized that there is no such thing as guilt. Guilt is not real because there is no guilt in God. This changed everything. It was a clear distinction between false and true. I don’t know how this worked for Jesus, but I had to take it a step at a time. Since the shift has happened, I am seldom distracted by the “poof” of guilt that I see in the world.

Now, at this moment in time, I am certain that there is no guilt and so it is no longer hard for me to see innocence. I am still aware of guilt thoughts, but even when I am momentarily confused by one, I know that I am confused and I just wait for clarity. Because I am waiting for it, clarity comes quickly.

I think that even these brief moments of confusion are going to be short lived. How could it last when I have so little interest in guilt? Over and over as I read this section I am aware of the debt of gratitude I owe Jesus for blazing this trail, for getting here first and thus assuring that I would, too.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 8-1-12

8-1-12
2 The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God. So he became identified with Christ, a man no longer, but at one with God. The man was an illusion, for he seemed to be a separate being, walking by himself, within a body that appeared to hold his self from Self, as all illusions do. Yet who can save unless he sees illusions and then identifies them as what they are? Jesus remains a Savior because he saw the false without accepting it as true. And Christ needed his form that He might appear to men and save them from their own illusions.

Jesus was a man, just like us. He lived in the world and experienced the illusion just as we do, with all the apparent issues and challenges we have. While he was doing this he became aware that the world is an illusion. He remembered that his brothers are not what they appear and he saw in them the Christ they truly are. In seeing the Christ in them, he remembered God.

As we live in the world and experience all of the challenges of doing so, we too, can make that final shift. We can remember the truth, recognize the innocence that we all are and see the face of Christ in our brothers, and see the face of Christ in the mirror. This is how we remember God. All that we have to do is accept that what we see now is not true. The truth will then reveal itself to us as it did to Jesus.

Christ used the form of Jesus to show us all that it could be done and to show us how to do it. This can be done through us as well. The body of Myron can be used in this way. The body that you are identified with can be used in this way by Christ. Each time one of us chooses to remember the truth while we are living the illusion, we become a model that others can follow in the same way that Jesus did this for us.

Why do I think I am Myron? I have chosen to identify with the story of Myron and with the body that is part of this story and is called Myron. The more closely I identify with it the harder it is for me to consider I might be something else. If I am fully identified with Myron I will think this whole idea of being something else is insane.

I have gone through a period of allowing myself to consider another possibility. It has been a time of shifts. I shift my thinking, my belief, a little at a time. Because I was so identified with the story of Myron, I accepted all the “sins” I imagined were committed as if they were real, and as if they defined me.

First I had to relax my belief that I am only this body and this personality. Then I had to let go of the idea that I am this body/personality at all. I began to accept that this life I had imagined was me, is just an illusion. Because in identifying with the body of Myron as me I had also identified with all her “sins,” this was something to be let go. First I let go of the idea I am sinful, then I had to let go of the idea of sin. As I did this, I also shifted in my vision of all my brothers.

As I am letting go of what I thought was true, something else is taking its place. I am learning to see the false and to know its not true. Right now I see this happening in the present moment. It takes form in whatever way fits the story for today. I notice I have a headache and I remember that pain is not real. How interesting that I seemed to have called for pain. I wonder why I did that. I give the idea that pain could be real to the Holy Spirit. I am grateful that I know this is not real no matter the appearance.

This morning I realized that yesterday I got caught up in the story making plans and deciding what I should do. I notice the thought that I should not have done this. It is an invitation to guilt. This is just a thought and it doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. I did notice that it doesn’t feel peaceful to do this and I am choosing differently today. I give the Holy Spirit the idea that plans and decisions need to be made. I wait to see what comes next. 

I have such gratitude for Jesus I can barely contain it and it overflows as tears. I am grateful to him for being the way-shower. I am grateful to the Holy Spirit for being my guide and my comforter. I am grateful for another way, and that I am willing to claim this now.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 7-31-12

7-31-12
5. JESUS - CHRIST
1 There is no need for help to enter Heaven for you have never left. But there is need for help beyond yourself as you are circumscribed by false beliefs of your Identity, which God alone established in reality. Helpers are given you in many forms, although upon the altar they are one. Beyond each one there is a Thought of God, and this will never change. But they have names which differ for a time, for time needs symbols, being itself unreal. Their names are legion, but we will not go beyond the names the course itself employs. God does not help because He knows no need. But He creates all Helpers of His Son while he believes his fantasies are true. Thank God for them for they will lead you home.

As often happens in the Course, Jesus tells us that something is true, then he tells us we will treat it as if it is not true. We don’t need help getting to Heaven because we are already there. But. We don’t know we are there so we are given help. Our help comes from outside the mind that made the error. This only makes sense. Jesus is outside the mind now, so he can help and he does this through A Course in Miracles and other ways as well.

We all have an Inner Teacher which is outside the mind, but working through the mind. It has helped me tremendously to have developed communication with this Voice. I did this through keeping a journal in which I ask for help as I study and then allowing that Voice to answer. All I had to do was become willing to set aside what I thought everything meant and then I was given the answer. The more willing I became to surrender to the process, and the less desire I had to decide what anything means on my own, the clearer the Voice became to me.

Jesus lets us know that our Helpers come in many forms, but they are actually all one. However it seems that it is helpful for us to have names and personalities we can relate to and so that is what we are given. I relate to Jesus, Jeshua, and to the Holy Spirit. To a lesser degree I call on Mary, some Saints, and some Angels. Through my study of the Inner Ramana, I have developed respect for Ramana Maharshi.

There are people still living who I look to for help. I look to the Holy Spirit speaking through them to me because their ability to set aside their self to hear that Voice allows an exceptionally clear message to come through. As we have learned anyone can be a teacher of God, simply because they want to, and all of us who want this have at least moments when we are open channels for that Voice.

I am practicing opening my Heart to that communication. We all share the same Holy Spirit so we can all communicate on that level if we become willing. I think that no matter what someone says, we can hear the truth in it if that is what we want to hear. I am learning to listen for the truth and I hear it in the most unexpected places.

Each of these “different” Helpers are really the same Helper, but they stand as symbols that we can relate to and understand. They do this for us as long as we need it. God does not know need, so he does not help, but he supplies all the Helpers we think we need for as long as we think we need them. As long as I believe in separation I will need help changing my mind. Once my change of mind is complete and there is no false belief left in it, perhaps I will be a Helper.

I love how this paragraph ends. It tells us to be grateful for our Helpers because they will lead us home. I do feel grateful, very grateful. My heart overflows with love and gratitude for this help in every form it takes.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 7-30-12

7-30-12
8 O my brothers, if you only knew the peace that will envelop you and hold you safe and pure and lovely in the Mind of God, you could but rush to meet Him where His altar is. Hallowed your Name and His, for they are joined here in this holy place. Here He leans down to lift you up to Him, out of illusions into holiness; out of the world and to eternity; out of all fear and given back to love.

Obviously something has shifted for me. I see that Jesus is right when he tells us that we are innocent and that only what God created can be real. I see that guilt is not real, and neither is pain or fear or depression, shame, hate or any other of the effects of the belief in separation. This world is not real and the bodies with their personalities are not real. I see that I am not anything I thought I was, and that any word I use to describe me simply limits what I am. Suddenly I understand what it means to say, I am.

I am still aware of the ego thoughts in my mind. They are there when I wake up. I notice them throughout the day. They especially press in on me at the end of the day. Occasionally I am aware of a thought that I still believe. For instance, I talked about my fear of heights. So far I have not let that thought go. I have no idea why that is. My friend told me about her experience with that fear and how she was freed from it when she learned about a past life experience of falling to her death.

I wonder how this will unfold for me? The fear I feel when I think about being in high places is so intense that it is hard to believe it could ever just go away, and yet, fear is not real. I made it up. This means that it is only a thought away from ceasing to exist for me. A slight shift in perception and it disappears. For now I seem unwilling to allow that shift, but that’s all right. It will unfold as it must. I will be interested to see that happen.

Most of the thoughts that catch my attention do so only briefly. They are like old ideas that I have lost interest in coming back for another try. I will suddenly remember something mean I said to my mom when I was young and feel a twinge of guilt. I look at that guilt and it just fades away because I can’t sustain a belief in it. It’s not a matter of choosing not to be guilty for a certain thing, it is that guilt itself is an illusion. If there is no such thing as guilt then it cannot apply to anything said or done or thought. If it is not part of God then it cannot exist. God is not guilty.

The ego does not give up just because I see it for the charlatan it is. It keeps bringing me disturbing thoughts to see if I am interested in some of them.  It insists that I if I see a spiteful thought in my mind, this means I must be a spiteful person and so I must be guilty for that. That is so silly I cannot imagine why I used to believe it.

Thoughts don’t belong to me; they just exist in the mind until the idea of separation is let go. They do not reflect the truth about me or about anyone. These thoughts I lay on the altar for healing. Even if I feel no particular interest in them I bring them to Holy Spirit anyway. If a thought is in my awareness it is for me to heal.

The reason I was thinking about all this today is that my life is so much more peaceful and happy now. As I read today’s paragraph I can believe in it because I have experienced a significant shift in that direction and so I know it can happen, and I know how easy it is. In the past I would read these promises, these little glimpses into Heaven and they would be lovely words without a lot of impact. I simply could not imagine getting from here to there.

I felt too burdened by my accumulated guilt and the fear of the future. What must I do to atone for that guilty past? Surely I would be punished in some way and often. These beliefs pulled me so deeply into the illusion that I could not imagine ever clawing my way out of it. To be with God, a part of God? To be safe and perfectly peaceful and happy? It must be a trick to get me close enough to punish, the ego says. The ego doesn’t make sense, but it can be scary anyway.

Or if that one doesn’t work the ego says someday after enough hard work and endless hours of study; someday in another lifetime, I will wake up and things will be better. Read another book, travel to study with another teacher. Do another process. The reward is there, always just out of reach. Safely, out of reach. Because who wants to give up their self for something that may not even exist.

I believed all that and more. And yet, one day I saw it all for the nothing it is and everything changed. It all looks the same, but nothing is the same. I am innocent. I am still as God created me. I am one with my Creator. He loves me and will lean to me and lift me to Him. Oh my dear God, what that must be like!

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