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Study of Manual for Teachers 2-26-12

Day 57
10. HOW IS JUDGMENT RELINQUISHED?
1 Judgment, like other devices by which the world of illusions is maintained, is totally misunderstood by the world. It is actually confused with wisdom, and substitutes for truth. As the world uses the term, an individual is capable of “good” and “bad” judgment, and his education aims at strengthening the former and minimizing the latter. There is, however, considerable confusion about what these categories mean. What is “good” judgment to one is “bad” judgment to another. Further, even the same person classifies the same action as showing “good” judgment at one time and “bad” judgment at another time. Nor can any consistent criteria for determining what these categories are be really taught. At any time the student may disagree with what his would-be teacher says about them, and the teacher himself may well be inconsistent in what he believes. “Good” judgment, in these terms, does not mean anything. No more does “bad.”

Jesus is pointing out what should be obvious to us; judgment is not wisdom, but is confusion. We are taught all of our lives to learn to make good judgments as opposed to bad, and yet, we are using perception to make these judgments and perception is unreliable. It shifts and changes and is seldom the same day to day, often not the same moment to moment. Therefore, our judgments are unreliable as well.

When I am through teaching today, the first thing the ego wants to do is judge how well I did. That is always its first thought. It always wants to judge according to the level of approval. If I am posting a teaching on facebook it wants to see how many people like it. If teaching on Gather it wants to find some sign of acceptance, comments or how many people show up, anything that reassures it that its ok, that the teaching was “good.”

When I used to care how the ego judged my performance and how accepted I was, this kind of thing would drive me nuts. Every time I posted anything anywhere, I was so afraid. And no wonder I was afraid. The basis of my judgment was not very reliable. First of all, people would show up because they had time, they were bored, they needed something that had nothing to do with me. People would like what I posted or not according to their own unreliable judgment. It had absolutely nothing to do with me or what I meant the posting to say.

I could send out teachings for months and not get a comment about them, and then someone would send me a message saying how the teachings were changing her life. So if I was using the criteria of how people reacted to my writings as the way I judged myself, I might have stopped writing in the face of all that silence believing that I must not be doing a good job.

Somewhere along the line I stopped judging the writing. When I stopped judging it, I stopped being concerned what people thought because I no longer needed their reassurance. What a relief that was! Now I don’t make decisions about the writing at all. I just ask for words and I trust that I am at least teaching myself and, after all, what else am I supposed to do? My only goal is to accept the Atonement for myself. It makes me laugh now to think of all the stomach clenching moments as I waited for some sign that my judgment was good.

And that does not mean the ego is not looking for signs of approval, and it doesn’t mean that it isn’t judging like crazy. Judging is what the ego does. I just don’t listen to it. I am not interested in the useless judgment they way I used to be. And if my attention is snagged by a judgment, I notice pretty quickly and ask for clarity.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 2-25-12

Day 56

2 As the teacher of God advances in his training, he learns one lesson with increasing thoroughness. He does not make his own decisions; he asks his Teacher for His answer, and it is this he follows as his guide for action. This becomes easier and easier, as the teacher of God learns to give up his own judgment. The giving up of judgment, the obvious prerequisite for hearing God’s Voice, is usually a fairly slow process, not because it is difficult, but because it is apt to be perceived as personally insulting. The world’s training is directed toward achieving a goal in direct opposition to that of our curriculum. The world trains for reliance on one’s judgment as the criterion for maturity and strength. Our curriculum trains for the relinquishment of judgment as the necessary condition of salvation. 

I try to speak only from my own personal experience. So I could say a lot about resistance to giving up judgment, but I probably don’t need to. We all know what that feels like. When I first approached the idea as I read about it in the Course, it sounded undoable. I could not understand how it could happen. How was I supposed to survive in the world without judging things?

I slowly, a bit at a time, let go of my resistance as I became more and more willing to trust a Voice that came through my mind but not from my mind. (I speak of the mind as the ego-thinking mind.) I fully accept that I can and will let go of all judgment as I learn to listen to only that Voice. I am still resistant, but don’t doubt my true desire or my ultimate success.

I got a text last night from someone who wanted something from me. I am not interested in complying and my immediate thought was to ignore the text. I felt an immediate “tap” on my shoulder. I have asked Holy Spirit to help my vigilance and he was reminding me that this is not a decision I want to make on my own. Even at this moment I hear the ego saying, yes you do. Sigh. But no I won’t. I have no idea if I will comply or not. I haven’t received that guidance yet.

What I do know is that I have no idea what it is for and how it can be used for our awakening, so I will not make that decision on my own. The ego has a lot of reasons to say no and could come up with reasons to say yes, but they are all based on shifting perceptions, and not one bit of truth. At best, the ego might accidentally make a helpful choice, but why would I want to go with those odds when I have the Holy Spirit in my mind.

The Holy Spirit sees the big picture, wants only what is best for all, and knows how this can be achieved. Really, it is only a matter of purpose. As I remember my purpose, the choice is obvious. My purpose is to awaken from the dream of separation. It might seem like my purpose is to plan my day and avoid this interruption in my plans, but that is the ego’s purpose. My purpose is to awaken. I do this only as I accept that I was misinformed about learning to rely on judgment as the criterion for maturity and strength.

I said that I try only to teach from my own personal experience. Using that criteria, I can teach about needing to be vigilant because the ego self does not want to give up making its own choices based on its own judgments no matter how faulty. I can also say with an absolute certainty that if I step back from this ego desire, the answer that is needed will unfailingly appear in my mind, and it will be the answer that gives peace of mind, and brings me closer to the fruition of my purpose.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 2/24/12

Day 55
9. ARE CHANGES REQUIRED IN THE LIFE SITUATION OF GOD’S TEACHERS?
1 Changes are required in the minds of God’s teachers. This may or may not involve changes in the external situation. Remember that no one is where he is by accident, and chance plays no part in God’s plan. It is most unlikely that changes in attitudes would not be the first step in the newly-made teacher of God’s training. There is, however, no set pattern, since training is always highly individualized. There are those who are called upon to change their life situation almost immediately, but these are generally special cases. By far the majority are given a slowly-evolving training program, in which as many previous mistakes as possible are corrected. Relationships in particular must be properly perceived, and all dark cornerstones of unforgiveness removed. Otherwise the old thought system still has a basis for return.

I have noticed how true it is that our training is highly individualized. I have been given a few teachers to assist in my training, and it is hard to avoid the temptation to judge my own path by how much it resembles theirs. I think I am finally starting to understand that this is not helpful. If I try to step only in someone else’s footsteps I will miss the path Holy Spirit has laid out for me, or at least I will be uncomfortable because I am deciding for myself what my path should look like.

One teacher Holy Spirit brought into my life is Regina Dawn Akers, scribe to the Holy Spirit’s Interpretation of the New Testament, and The Teachings of the Inner Ramana. Her path more closely resembled the first example Jesus gives us. Nearly right away she was asked to change her whole life, and it continues like that for her.

My path has been like most. It is a very slowly evolving training program. I see why this is the better path for me. I began with a great deal of fear that I had to learn to let go. If I started with great change I may have been overcome by my fear. In retrospect, I see that I began my training in the early ‘70’s and found the Course in 1981. It was not until 1999 or so, when I chose to accelerate that training through the Pathways of Light courses, that I became ready for major changes of my life circumstances.

I always enjoy hearing someone else’s story. Everyone’s is a little different, but some things are going to be common to each story. No matter what is asked of us as far as our external situation goes, we are required to first make certain changes in our thinking.

Even Regina, whose life changed dramatically and very quickly, had to make certain attitude changes before she would be ready to accept these changes. She was given the words of peace pilgrim to help open her mind to these changes and then an accelerated year with the Course with assistance from her Inner Guide. Something she said made a real impression on me. Well, lots of things she says make impressions. ~smile~ But the one I’m thinking of now concerns Peace Pilgrim.

Peace Pilgrim was talking about our Oneness and Regina had never heard of such a thing and didn’t understand. She doubted this, but she didn’t say that this can’t be true. What she said in her mind was, “I wonder how this could be true?” This was her way of saying that she was willing to be taught, and all that is asked of us in the beginning is a little willingness.

The Holy Spirit is still working with me to help me correct as many errors as possible. As my willingness grows, my fear diminishes and my progress becomes steadier. Jesus says that relationships especially must be “properly perceived, and all dark cornerstones of unforgiveness removed.” I certainly see that.

When I divorced my last husband I thought I was getting out of something. I quickly saw that this was not the case! I could leave the body, but the relationship stayed with me until it was healed. Since it is all in the mind to begin with, the results of my beliefs, I see how it is that the relationship goes with me wherever I go. I chose to become a teacher of God, and healing this relationship was part of that choice.

It is often only in retrospect that I recognize a situation I had been through was part of this training. I often become distracted by the form the situation has taken, and not realized until later it was really the purification of another relationship, or more purification of a relationship. This has been especially true of my relationships with my children and close family. Many of the learning situations with my children have had the goal of allowing the specialness to fall away.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 2-23-12

Day 54
6 The body’s eyes will continue to see differences. But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be “sicker” than others, and the body’s eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal. This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two, but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place-for differences cannot exist within it-so too are illusions without distinctions. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth.

Oh man! This is so helpful. I love simplicity. I look at what the body’s eyes show me and I sort in only one way; is it true? In the past when someone’s body appeared ravished with sickness, my mind would decide how sick they were and what were the possibilities for healing. Some sicknesses cannot be healed, I am told. A friend has Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. The world says this cannot be cured. The doctors told her, go home and put your affairs into order and make the most of what time you have left.

If I accept what I see, and accept what I am told by others who can only see with the body’s eyes, the options are limited. Maybe I can scour the internet for some alternative healing. We can all pray that the diseased body be healed and get our miracle this way. Or maybe the best thing is to accept what is happening to the body as perfect for this person. I could avoid my friend so I don’t have to see it and feel inadequate because I don’t know what to do. These are all thoughts I have had about sickness.

What I was overlooking is the most basic of all answers. There is not a worse disease, or a more horrible disease, or an incurable disease. Disease is either true or it is not true, and this includes all the many forms in which ego projects its belief in suffering pain and death. If disease is true then God is not, because disease is not in God.

The only answer to sickness is healing. Healing occurs at the source of the sickness which is the beliefs held in the mind. What difference does it make how the sickness manifests if the cause is a belief in sickness? Sickness is a thought. Healing is a different thought. Do I have a bigger thought or a smaller thought? Hahaha. That’s funny to think of.

What are my eyes showing me? Is it an illusion? The answer to all illusion is truth. I see my dear sister in law and my body’s eyes report a body suffering from emphysema. My heart shows me something different. It shows me my sister in God, perfection itself. Do I get tempted by the ego’s picture? Yes, sometimes. But then I am attracted to the brilliance of her true self, I feel the Holy Spirit in me touching the Holy Spirit in her, and I am back to reality.

My sister in law has chosen to use her story of sickness to help her wake up because she recognizes her purpose. My part in her story, of course, is to use it to help us wake up. We share one purpose in this and so strengthen each other. No matter how many times the ego invites us to return to fear, we are always willing to hear the Voice for God calling us to truth and to healing. We refuse to be undone by the appearance of illusions. 

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 2-22-12

Day 53
5 There can be no order of difficulty in healing merely because all sickness is illusion. Is it harder to dispel the belief of the insane in a larger hallucination as opposed to a smaller one? Will he agree more quickly to the unreality of a louder voice he hears than to that of a softer one? Will he dismiss more easily a whispered demand to kill than a shout? And do the number of pitchforks the devils he sees carrying affect their credibility in his perception? His mind has categorized them all as real, and so they are all real to him. When he realizes they are all illusions they will disappear. And so it is with healing. The properties of illusions which seem to make them different are really irrelevant, for their properties are as illusory as they are.

This, of course, reminds me of “A Beautiful Mind,” in which a brilliant but schizophrenic scientist begins to doubt his own beliefs, and so learns to disregard the voices and the visions. He has used the most difficult of all classrooms to learn, and therefore to teach, that our thoughts are illusions, and that we choose the ones we want to believe. Believing them is all that gives them life in our personal worlds.

Closer to home for me is my second husband, Charlie. Charlie’s story is one of schizophrenia as well. He sees things and hears voices that no one else does. I can assure you they feel as real to him as the voices and visions that you and I share. His are as real (or rather unreal) as ours, since this is all an illusion. But because of his paranoia, and the fact that others don’t believe in his “reality” it is more painful than most of ours.

The challenge for him all of his life is that when someone questioned his understanding, he would have to sort through those thoughts and then try to decide if the meaning he gave them was right or if the other person was right. His paranoia made this so much harder because it told him that people were trying to mislead him. Because he believed that thought, it was very real for him.

We do the same thing, although without a malfunctioning brain it is easier for us and since most people sort in more or less the same way with pretty much the same conclusions, we don’t feel so uncertain and afraid of the process. My experience has been that believing the same way as everyone else does not make my decisions right, it just makes me one of many who have given meaning and value where there is none.

This is why I want to let go of my thinking mind which will always function within the parameters of the illusion, and so never lead me out of it. Another way to express this is that I want to let go of directing and analyzing and giving my attention to the ego thoughts in my mind. I want to disregard appearances, and disregard meaning and thinking, and wait for direction from something outside ego to be given me. The Inner Ramana through Regina calls this receiving direction through the mind from outside the mind. When that happens there is nothing for me to do with it but to be grateful and to follow the way it points.

What a relief to realize I can stop figuring out which illusion is truer than the other, and just know that all illusions are false. This will make such a clear and open space in my mind that I can be filled with truth. What is happening now is that I do this and then find an illusion I like and pretty soon I have forgotten my purpose and am off and running with another story.

In NTI, the Holy Spirit tells me that I will make a sincere decision to put them down but will then pick them up again, but not to worry about this. He says that this is like cutting off the leaves and I will continue to do this until I get to the root. He says it is a moment to moment decision. So in this moment, my decision is for God.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 2/21/12

Day 52
4 It is in the sorting out and categorizing activities of the mind that errors in perception enter. And it is here correction must be made. The mind classifies what the body’s eyes bring to it according to its preconceived values, judging where each sense datum fits best. What basis could be faultier than this? Unrecognized by itself, it has itself asked to be given what will fit into these categories. And having done so, it concludes that the categories must be true. On this the judgment of all differences rests, because it is on this that judgments of the world depend. Can this confused and senseless “reasoning” be depended on for anything?

A customer calls me with a problem. Even as he begins to speak, my mind has already begun the process of sorting and categorizing. At incredible speed I have put him in his place in my mind, who I think he is, what I think about his personality and how that will affect the tone of my reply to him, how smart I think he is, and how that will affect the words I use to answer him.

I judge according to how often he calls, and whether he is actually going to follow my advice. I calculate how important he is to me as a customer, how much time I can afford to give him. I judge his words to me according to their impact on my life. Does he sound mad and will this affect my bottom line? Perhaps I will see his request as a good opportunity to make myself more important to him. Perhaps I will see it as an intrusion.

And each of these thoughts branch off into more thoughts. It is all based on the past and on my thoughts about the past. No one is allowed to simply be. No one is allowed to free himself from the little prisons I build for him. He is, in my mind, the person I created. His actions and words seem to prove this to me over and over, and I mindlessly accept the judgments as if they were given to me, written in stone. “Ah hah, I knew he would do this or say that. I must be an astute judge of character.” And all along I am the maker of his character, pretending to discover it.

My day is thrown askew because circumstances change. I quickly, faster than the speed of light, I decide what it means and how it feels, and thus make a response. I pretend that none of this happened in my mind. I pretend that I am an innocent victim of circumstances beyond my control, and my feelings seem to confirm this assessment, confirm and prove it. All the time I am creating the categories that each judgment falls in and thus creating my reaction, which I then pretend is out of my control. What a dizzying process of self-delusion, and yet it is what I do all day long, every day.

The only exceptions are when I am, for brief periods of time, in my right mind. In that sublime state, love overflows into everything, and when the customer calls I only want to know how I can help this precious child of God, and I don’t ask my ego mind because I am in the other part of my mind. From this part of my mind, I don’t have any desire to categorize or judge. I don’t figure anything out. I bypass the thinking mind, and simply ask, and the answer is given.

Its so simple and so perfect, it seems I would always want to be only there. It seems a mystery to me that I so quickly revert to the ego- thinking mind. This morning I was reading a note I had made for myself. It came from Regina and she was talking about devotion to silence.

She said that the thoughts would start again and your attention would drift to them. Then she said that we can again make the decision to return to the heart. And she said, “In this decision thoughts are not fed. That which is not fed must eventually die.” How encouraging that feels to me!

This crazy self-deluding process of asking to be given what fits into my categories as proof that my categories are true is very deeply rooted in my consciousness, but I trust it can be undone. I give my desire and my willingness today to starve the ego-thinking mind through frequently turning my attention away from it.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 2/20/12

Day 51
3 Where do all these differences come from? Certainly they seem to be in the world outside. Yet it is surely the mind that judges what the eyes behold. It is the mind that interprets the eyes’ messages and gives them “meaning.” And this meaning does not exist in the world outside at all. What is seen as “reality” is simply what the mind prefers. Its hierarchy of values is projected outward, and it sends the body’s eyes to find it. The body’s eyes will never see except through differences. Yet it is not the messages they bring on which perception rests. Only the mind evaluates their messages, and so only the mind is responsible for seeing. It alone decides whether what is seen is real or illusory, desirable or undesirable, pleasurable or painful.

No matter what the body’s eyes tells us we see we must yet interpret that thing. We give everything all the meaning it has for us. How we perceive all things is up to us. It is very helpful at this point to ask for help. My experience has been that if I feel upset in any way about something I see, the Holy Spirit can always show me a different meaning. 

I became convinced of this when I read some of the interpretations of the Bible Jesus gave us in the Text. One of them particularly impressed upon me how important it is to read with the Holy Spirit rather than the ego. The Biblical quote said, “God will not be mocked.” Before I had ACIM, I thought of this passage as scary. It seemed like a threat. If I mocked God, that is if I did or believed anything He didn’t like, I was in trouble.

Jesus explained that I saw it this way because I was reading with the ego, which is a fear based thought system, so my understanding would naturally be fearful. He then told me that this quote was actually a promise and a reassurance. Reading it with the Holy Spirit I understood it to mean that nothing that we could do would in any way affect God, so don’t worry about it.

I visualize it this way. My mind has two filters. One of them is a truth filter, the other is a distorted separation filter. I read these simple words, “God will not be mocked.” They have no particular meaning until I filter them; they are just words, symbols of symbols. If I am using my God filter, I am reassured by the meaning they take on as the words pass through peace, love, joy, wholeness, and perfection. If I filter them through my ego filter, I am frightened by the meaning, which is affected by all that the ego filter holds; the beliefs in fear, suffering, punishment, shame, guilt, and death.

This one reinterpretation convinced me to form the happy habit of doing all things with the Holy Spirit rather than ego, so that I could discern from a true perspective, rather than from a perspective distorted by fear and guilt. The more perfectly I do this, the more peaceful and happy I am.

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