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Study of Manual for Teachers 3-4-12

Day 64

2 Again we come to the question of judgment. This time ask yourself whether your judgment or the Word of God is more likely to be true. For they say different things about the world, and things so opposite that it is pointless to try to reconcile them. God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. God says there is no death; your judgment sees but death as the inevitable end of life. God’s Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. Who is right? For one of you is wrong. It must be so.

When you put it like that, Jesus, what else can I do but acquiesce to your logic? My vision of this world is so completely different from God’s Vision that I cannot do anything to bring it in alignment. All I can do is accept that I am totally wrong. To say that I am right would be saying that God is wrong. Am I going to try to school God now?

The most helpful practice I have been given lately (I think it came from Regina) is to remind myself to disregard appearances. I cannot accept God’s judgment of the world if I believe what I see with the body’s eyes, and hear with the body’s ears. I cannot accept God’s judgment if I insist on making my own judgments.

I find it helpful to frequently remind myself that what I see is the effect of a thought in my mind. It is so easy to forget this. If I confuse cause and effect, I use the effect to prove a lie is the truth. I met someone new. When I met him my mind did that little judgment trick where it placed him in a box. This box was labeled “not all that smart”. When he would talk to me I would see the error in his words, and his inability to clearly express himself, and the box would get smaller and smaller. He even looked like he wasn’t all that bright. Everything he said and did confirmed my judgment.

Then one day we were playing a game that required a lot of knowledge and reasoning to win. There were probably a hundred questions and he knew the answer to every one of them. Oops, wrong box! I had to take him out of that box and put him in another one. This is one smart guy. From that point on I began to hear his words differently. He started to sound smart to me, and in fact, I began to see his strange answers as being above my head rather than confused or unknowing.

I don’t actually know anything about him. I only see the proof of what I decide is true. If someone says something to me and I have decided that person is not very smart then the words I hear prove they are not very smart. If I think they are smart then I hear words that prove they are smart. This is true no matter what the words are.

If someone who is a genius says something that doesn’t make sense to me then I hear those words as so far ahead of me that I can’t understand them. How I see the person has nothing to do with him, and is actually a reflection of my thoughts about him, my judgment of him. My belief comes first and the appearance comes second and that appearance seems to prove my judgment. I use the appearance to convince me of what I already decided. Its crazy and its how the ego works.

I will not see the world as it is by regarding appearances as true, by believing what I see. I will not see the world as it is by learning to be a better judge. I will only learn to see the world as it is by not judging at all. I will see the real world as I lay aside my judgment and allow truth to take its place.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 3-3-12

Day 63

11. HOW IS PEACE POSSIBLE IN THIS WORLD?

1 This is a question everyone must ask. Certainly peace seems to be impossible here. Yet the Word of God promises other things that seem impossible, as well as this. His Word has promised peace. It has also promised that there is no death, that resurrection must occur, and that rebirth is man’s inheritance. The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world. God’s Word has promised that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this.

This paragraph reassures us of God’s promises in the face of a world that seems to be the opposite of all He promises. More often than not, I fail to see a peaceful world, and yet God says that this is possible. God loves the world and I have to wonder how this could be. I don’t love the world and often wish to be free of it. Obviously, there is a disconnect between what I see and what exists.

How do I get from the world I see to the world God loves? The world as it is a fact and cannot be changed, but how I see the world is variable and I can choose to see differently. I have already become very aware of how unreliable my vision is. I used to very often be depressed and when I was depressed I saw everything from a darkened and gloomy perspective. Then when the depression lifted, I saw things differently.

I used to have little regard for myself and everything that happened was colored by this low self-esteem. When I began to accept that nothing I do or say can determine my worth because that was established in my creation, the world I see changed. Where once I saw everything that happened as proof of my low self-worth, now I saw it as a school room with many opportunities to allow the Holy Spirit to help me choose God over ego.

A Course in Miracles has given me a very simple process to transform the world I see. It has given me the opportunity to perceive differently. Perception will never be truth, but it will get close if I allow about my mind to be healed through forgiveness. I am supposed to live a life of peace, joy, and happiness. If what I see does not create those effects then I am wrong about what I see. I ask the Holy Spirit to join me in the experience and to show me what He sees. I am asking for true Vision rather than ego vision.

I was listening to people talking about politics and it was making me feel irritable. I asked the Holy Spirit how to see this. He showed me that the irritation was not about the subject, or the people talking, but about my judgment and the meaning I was giving the conversation. Without that judgment it was just words, sometimes interesting, but just words. It’s amazing how quickly and dramatically the world changes when I let go of the meaning I give it. 

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 3-2-12

Day 62
6 It is not difficult to relinquish judgment. But it is difficult indeed to try to keep it. The teacher of God lays it down happily the instant he recognizes its cost. All of the ugliness he sees about him is its outcome. All of the pain he looks upon is its result. All of the loneliness and sense of loss; of passing time and growing hopelessness; of sickening despair and fear of death; all these have come of it. And now he knows that these things need not be. Not one is true. For he has given up their cause, and they, which never were but the effects of his mistaken choice, have fallen from him. Teacher of God, this step will bring you peace. Can it be difficult to want but this?

I can imagine how all this is true. I have judged everything I see and know based on false information. No judgment I make will bring me to the truth and only the truth will bring me peace. My judgment has convinced me that I am in constant danger and must always be on the defense if not actually on the attack.

I saw someone I know at a restaurant with a woman I don’t know. I know this man as a customer, so only casually, but I have known him for a number of years. He’s friendly, smart, very nice, a genuinely kind and helpful person. As I walked away a different view of this man began to form in my mind as I wondered if he was cheating on his wife. I wondered if he saw me and if he was concerned about that. I wondered what is going on in his marriage and if he does this sort of thing a lot. I took him out of the category of nice guy and put him into one of philandering spouse.

All of this happened at the speed of thought, and had little impact on me since I don’t know him or his wife very well, but since I asked Holy Spirit to help me let go of judgment, He called my attention to this judgment. Yikes! It all had happened so quickly and with so little emotional attachment that I hardly noticed I was judging.

I made a decision about him that was based on an assumption which I came to based on things that have happened in the past, in books I have read and movies I have seen. I based that judgment on the flimsiest of evidence since he could have been sitting with his sister for all I know. Even if he was cheating how could I know what his story is supposed to look like.

It is tempting to believe that this kind of “minor” judgment is not really important. I didn’t act on it and I may not even think of it again. But judgment is judgment and the story I tell around it is not important to the effect of judgment on the mind. In my judgment of this man I made him separate from me. I am not one who would cheat on a spouse and he is. In my judgment I added to the illusion when I could have added to the Kingdom. In my judgment I turned my back on my Self, and walked away from peace, love and eternal joy. And I thought this judgment was unimportant.

Even my previous view of him as a really nice man was based on all sorts of false criteria. It was merely a judgment based on perception and projection and thus not reliable. The only judgment that is true is the judgment of the Holy Spirit, which says this man is the Son of God, perfect and whole and exactly as he was created. I notice that neither this man’s actions nor his words nor personality have any bearing on the judgment of the Holy Spirit.

As the burden of judgment slid from my shoulder, I felt relieved. I felt such gratitude! Later when I was walking to my car, I saw two people that would have normally elicited a judgment from me, but all I felt was loving curiosity. I wondered what their story was, and how it fits into the plan of Atonement. I felt grateful to them for their part in helping us all wake up. Then I realized how different this was for me and how much happier it made me not to judge. This feeling of love that flows in me and through me in the place of judgment could be mine all the time. I pray for that grace.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 3-1-12

Day 61
5 Therefore lay judgment down, not with regret but with a sigh of gratitude. Now are you free of a burden so great that you could merely stagger and fall down beneath it. And it was all illusion. Nothing more. Now can the teacher of God rise up unburdened, and walk lightly on. Yet it is not only this that is his benefit. His sense of care is gone, for he has none. He has given it away, along with judgment. He gave himself to Him Whose judgment he has chosen now to trust, instead of his own. Now he makes no mistakes. His Guide is sure. And where he came to judge, he comes to bless. Where now he laughs, he used to come to weep.

I feel such a relief that I am free to lay aside all judgment. I am very far from perfect at remembering to do so, and sometimes still, I feel a stubborn resistance to give it up. But I have done it often enough to be convinced of what Jesus says. While I was still in thrall to the ego belief that I should and even must judge, I had become so accustomed to the burden that I didn’t realize how heavy it was.

When I first started trying not to judge, I had trouble getting past the person’s behavior or their words. If it was a situation I was judging I had trouble getting past what I thought I knew. When I began to truly understand projection, I realized that I was never judging the other person’s behavior anyway, but only judging my thoughts about their behavior. I began to accept that I would never know anyone, only what I believed about that person and that was not really about that person, but about me. So really, I was learning to forgive myself my projections onto others.

What relief it was when I took the next step, and began to accept that I am innocent, and so is everyone else. Within that perfect innocence what is there to judge? Now when I notice I am judging someone, I don’t have to find some way to love them anyway (spiritual ego), or torture myself with “trying” not to judge them even though I still believe in their guilt (impossible). I just have to be willing to accept the simple truth that they are innocent. This sets the ego aside, and invites in the Holy Spirit. There is so little for me to do to be at peace.

Not only is my mind at peace because it has already reached the only true conclusion there is, it is now free to love and be loved. Without judgment blocking love, it flows naturally as is its nature. It flows through me and to everyone else. Without my judgment standing between us, my brother feels this freedom, too. Though he may not realize why, he feels a natural attraction, a desire to be in the presence of love. If he is too afraid of love to accept it he may retreat, but a seed is planted, and will one day grow.

As I have learned to accept that I cannot really judge anyway, and have been more willing to give up trying, I have learned that I don’t want to make my own decisions about what to do, where to go, what to say. The happy truth is that there is something outside the mind that moves through the mind to direct my decisions at the slightest invitation. It felt scary at first, to trust this “seemingly” alien presence, but slowly as I have continued my practice, I am learning to not only trust the Holy Spirit, but to realize it is the ego who is the usurper, and Spirit that is at home in my mind.

It seems I am not fully convinced that I want to live in uninterrupted peace and love. I often trade it for the dubious “right” to judge my brothers and allow the ego mind to make the decisions. But having tasted freedom, I am developing a strong desire to keep it, so I continue my vigilance and strengthen my willingness.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 2-29-12

Day 60
4 Remember how many times you thought you knew all the “facts” you needed for judgment, and how wrong you were? Is there anyone who has not had this experience? Would you know how many times you merely thought you were right, without ever realizing you were wrong? Why would you choose such an arbitrary basis for decision-making? Wisdom is not judgment; it is the relinquishment of judgment. Make then but one more judgment. It is this: There is Someone with you Whose judgment is perfect. He does know all the facts; past, present and to come. He does know all the effects of His judgment on everyone and everything involved in any way. And He is wholly fair to everyone, for there is no distortion in His perception.

It is absolutely astounding how stubbornly I have clung to my “right” to judge, especially when you consider how very often I have been wrong.  And as Jesus points out, that is just the times I am aware of my error. Even those times when the right choice for myself seems obvious, how could I know what would be best for everyone involved? What about those who would be affected by my decision of whom I am not even aware? Now that I am conscious of my union with everyone I am also mindful of the enormity of my responsibility to the Sonship.

I am deeply grateful that I have been awakened to my connection to the Holy Spirit in my mind. To know that I should not be judging and not to have an awareness of the alternative would have been too cruel. I see now why I so often chose denial in the past. When first reading about judgment my mind simply rejected the idea that I couldn’t and shouldn’t judge, then insisted that this didn’t make sense and that I couldn’t do this. As I continued to practice it anyway, I began to accept, but made exceptions, coming up with all sorts of silly justifications for my exceptions.

I see now that I was afraid of the alternative. I was afraid on so many levels. I was afraid to give up judgment because it would mean giving up self and that was the bottom line fear. Even as I began to embrace the idea of giving up self, I was afraid because I wasn’t very good at all at hearing the Holy Spirit on a consistent basis.

If I am not to judge, and if I can’t hear the Voice that would judge for me, what was I supposed to do? It felt so hopeless that I just wiped the idea from my mind. But even that would only work for a bit, and then the truth would be there in my awareness again. I had looked at the truth and now could not go back to not knowing the truth. Not knowing what I knew was about as easy as putting toothpaste back into the tube.

It is taking a lot of practice to let go of judgment, and it’s helpful to know that none of this is real and that I am completely innocent regardless of how many times I become confused. So I stumble through the process doing the best I can, and when I become discouraged with myself, I can often laugh knowing this is just another ego judgment. When I choose ego instead of Holy Spirit, I tend not to get too upset about that. After all, I have done it about a gazillion times without even knowing I had an alternative. What’s a few more?

I am learning to trust the Holy Spirit and to trust myself to hear His Voice. I’m learning not to second guess my intuition. The Holy Spirit is being very patient and very kind with me. I was at the store the other day picking up a few things on my list. I had a fleeting thought to buy copy paper, but in one of those lightening quick decision making processes I used to be so proud of, I decided against it.

A couple of days later I ran out of paper in the middle of an important project. I had the thought that it didn’t matter, but all the thoughts in my judgment arsenal pointed to the opposite answer. So I stopped everything and went to the store to buy the paper even though it was going to throw my whole schedule off to do so. I got the job finished, and then discovered it was completely unnecessary.

I am happy to see this error so clearly because this one and others are motivating me to pay closer attention to my Inner Guidance. I also see that a quiet mind would make it so much easier to be aware of the Inner Voice. I see why Holy Spirit has been so consistent in leading me to practices that have helped me to quiet the turmoil in my mind. I am determined to give my increased willingness to this practice, too. Now that I am experiencing the ease of being led, I cannot imagine going back to being my own guide, and I see that all the ego chatter in my mind is an obstruction to my awareness of that all-knowing Voice.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 2-28-12

Day 59
3 The aim of our curriculum, unlike the goal of the world’s learning, is the recognition that judgment in the usual sense is impossible. This is not an opinion but a fact. In order to judge anything rightly, one would have to be fully aware of an inconceivably wide range of things; past, present and to come. One would have to recognize in advance all the effects of his judgments on everyone and everything involved in them in any way. And one would have to be certain there is no distortion in his perception, so that his judgment would be wholly fair to everyone on whom it rests now and in the future. Who is in a position to do this? Who except in grandiose fantasies would claim this for himself?

This paragraph was the reason I became willing to stop judging. Once Jesus pointed out to me the reason it is impossible for me judge anything rightly, I realized I have no business judging. The ego, of course, wants to make exceptions. I judged my son being very sick as bad, but I came to understand that I was wrong to make that judgment.

How do I know what his karma needs in order to be discharged? How do I know what effects that sickness had on other people in his life, and how it might affect him later in his life? I certainly received many lessons from my experience with it, and other people I know have been affected, including people who have read about it through my writing.

I will sometimes see some of the effects of some of the things I am tempted to judge as bad, and understand how that judgment would be wrong, but often I don’t understand. My mother died of Alzheimer’s disease at this time two years ago. I don’t understand how that disease could be anything but bad. I don’t see any good that came from it. I can only trust that Jesus is right that I don’t have enough information to make a judgment.

I visualize the Atonement as an immense tapestry with millions of threads interweaving to create a picture of perfect wholeness. If I am looking at one very minute part of the tapestry it looks like a little scene within the whole. I can only see what is going on in that very isolated small section of the tapestry and cannot see what happens to the threads after, and which threads go on to weave in and out with other threads to complete the part I may never be aware of, and how some of those threads will go on to create other isolated scenes.

Seen from a single person’s perspective the tapestry seems to be many separate and isolated stories, but from a distance they resolve into one picture of all that is. Does Myron imagine she can direct this weaving, these stories? How can I say what should be happening or not happening?
The whole thing is so complex and so far outside the narrow scope of my vision that I cannot begin to direct the weave. I cannot even understand what my very small part is to look like, much less how it adds to the finished tapestry.

I am grateful that it is not my job to make these decisions. It seems that Jesus is in charge of the Atonement because he sees the entire project and knows what the final picture will be. I am not learning to refrain from judgment because I am not allowed, but because I cannot. When you consider the folly of judging, the attempt to do so is clearly the ego at its most grandiose.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 2-27-12

Day 58
2 It is necessary for the teacher of God to realize, not that he should not judge, but that he cannot. In giving up judgment, he is merely giving up what he did not have. He gives up an illusion; or better, he has an illusion of giving up. He has actually merely become more honest. Recognizing that judgment was always impossible for him, he no longer attempts it. This is no sacrifice. On the contrary, he puts himself in a position where judgment through him rather than by him can occur. And this judgment is neither “good” nor “bad.” It is the only judgment there is, and it is only one: “God’s Son is guiltless, and sin does not exist.” 

There is such ease in letting go of the fantasy that I can and should judge. The only time that I feel the loss of judgment is when I think that my salvation lies in judgment. For instance, recently when I lost a customer, I spent a whole day turning over judgment of the situation to the Holy Spirit, and then taking it back. When it was in my court, I judged myself as wrong and in trouble. When I gave it to the Holy Spirit, He judged the situation as illusional and therefore completely unimportant. He judged me and everyone involved as guiltless, and assured me that there is no sin.

So why did I keep taking it back and insisting on judging myself?  Well, this is a convoluted and clearly insane story, but I’m going to tell it anyway. First, we really do believe in original sin, the idea that we are born with the stain of sin because we denied God through our little experiment with the separation idea. So we have a lot of deeply buried, unconscious guilt that keeps bubbling up to the surface. The ego solution is to create situations that allow us to express the guilt within us as projections of an outward situation. This seems to put it outside ourselves and give us a reason for the unexplained guilt we feel.

It’s ugly and frightening stuff, all this unacknowledged guilt that keeps appearing in the mind. The ego solution is to sling it away from me and make it appear outside my mind. So I see that I lost a customer and this is not good, but now I at least have an explanation for this guilt. I am guilty for losing a customer. That must be it! And, I have saved myself from looking into the dark abyss of my mind to see where guilt actually comes from, a thought so frightening that I have never, until now, been able to even acknowledge as a possibility.

Ok, now I have a situation completely outside myself that nicely explains the guilt I feel. I’m guilty for not doing a good job with my customer and will suffer the consequences. Only, I don’t feel good about that guilt either. But, even though the first projection was unconscious, I have a secret knowing of what I did, and so I’ve got the hang of saving myself through projection now, and it is easy to take this to the next level.

I project the blame onto the customer who is being unreasonable, and the boss who should have caught this error before it went this far. I could go on, but I don’t want to bore you. I feel certain that you have played this kind of defense out in your own mind and get the idea. Now its clear why I think I need judgment, and why I resist the Holy Spirit’s true and beautiful judgment which could so easily be mine.

Just to be sure I understand this completely, and to put it in writing so it will make it harder for me to deny any knowledge of it later, I am going to say it again. There is deeply buried and completely denied guilt (a lot of guilt) in my mind which occurred as a result of believing I sinned against God when I chose to experience separation. In an attempt to save myself from that guilt, I hid it “outside” my mind in the form of events and circumstances.

These events and circumstances provide a clear explanation for the guilt and it has nothing to do with my sin against God. Whew! Of course, now that I have now given it another cause, it can never be healed, because as the Inner Ramana says, I’m looking in the wrong direction. I’m looking at my projections instead of at my own mind where the source of the problem actually exists.

Never the less, I start working on the problem that I see as being outside me, and continue the process that has worked so far. I project the guilt over this self-made dilemma, onto others within my projected world. I seem to be going no place soon. I am caught in a loop of blame, shame, guilt, and fear, and there appears to be no way out, especially since I have been doing it under cover of a self-induced temporary amnesia. Obviously the ego thought of everything, except of course, how to get out of it. The ego’s solution to my intense guilt and fear of God is to never get out of it, just to remain in hiding through projecting and projecting and projecting, forever.

As Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Our only way out is to let go of the thinking of the ego mind to make a place within us for something outside that thought process. Into this empty and welcoming space, the Holy Spirit will come with the only truth. He will fill us with the happy realization that we did nothing wrong, we are completely innocent, and there is no such thing as sin. With this realization the loop will be broken as we will no longer have need of the ego’s solution of projection. Ahh, freedom!

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