Together, We Light the Way

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Reflections on the Journey of the Soul

Usually around 10-12 we have the first stirrings of the desire to
know who we really are, but there is much to do within the world,
much to learn and so we set it aside. The same questions emerge
around mid-twenties, but again we are busy establishing ourselves in
the world, and it is often in the mid thirties or forties that the
questions begin to press upon us. We now have more time, less urgent
business within the world.

I followed this pattern myself. I was involved in religion before
that but it was a very fear based exercise. In my thirties I became
interested in God and in who I was and why I was here. By the time I
was 33 I found A Course in Miracles. However, I moved slowly through
it and used life to distract me frequently. I began reawakening to my
purpose when I approached 50. It was as if a switch had been thrown.

At 50 there was an internal prompting, as if something said, “OK, now
it is time.” This is when I found Pathways of Light and began my
ministerial studies. From that point on I felt like something within
me knew something I did not know. I would think that becoming a
minister was crazy, but then I would feel this knowing that I was
doing what I needed to do. I would doubt everything I was remembering
about the truth, and become very afraid, but then I would just know
it was alright.

I can see that there is the ego thought system of separation within
the mind which drives us for a long time as we establish our lives,
but the Memory of God, the Holy Spirit, is there as well gently
reminding us of something else. When the time is right, the reminders
are more interesting to us and we listen more closely, according to
our readiness.

At first I looked back on my life and thought about all the time I
had wasted and wished I had done better. But I understand now that I
was doing my work even while nearly completely unconscious. All of
those times when I chose to listen to ego, I was giving myself the
experiences I needed to decide what I really desired. Did I like the
way my life had gone? Did it feel good when I lost my temper, or
treated someone like they didn’t matter? Were my special
relationships fulfilling and did they bring me happiness? Now that I
had this wealth of experience, I could continue as I was, or decide
that this was not working and that I wanted to listen to the other
Teacher.

When I saw how all things really do work for good, I stopped fighting
the ego and thinking of it as enemy. It is simply the way I keep the
illusion of being separate from God going. I am not at war with it
and it stands no chance of taking me somewhere I don’t already want
to go. The only thing left to do is to back out of that thought
system by noticing where I use it in my life and deciding
differently. This is a really radically different way for me to look
at it, but it feels right to me. And it seems to work better and make
for a happier life without all the tension of being forever at war
with a part of myself

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Ego Reaction

Slowly, a little at a time I am opening my mind to Holy Spirit and
receiving some thoughts. What I noticed this morning is that the ego
part of my mind is very uncomfortable with this process. It wants to
understand using its usual methods. For instance, how does this fit
in with the understandings that ego has developed through logic and
past experience.

This is the ego’s function as it sees it is to collect information,
organize it and use it to protect the body-mind. Like seeing that
stepping into the street without looking both ways could result in
the death of the body and so ego considers this valuable info and
files it in the brain for use when needed. This is the kind of
information the ego understands and feels comfortable with.

What the Holy Spirit gives me cannot be used in this way. This
morning as I was sitting as Christ for my five minutes of practice I
suddenly realized what a powerful mind it takes to uphold this
illusion. Those are the words I can think of but the actual
experience was far more than I can articulate. Suddenly I felt like
crying. I felt very fearful and that was when I realized that ego was
threatened by what it cannot understand. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for
helping me to understand where this fear came from, and thank you for
the immediate correction of this thought.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Give me your blessing.

When I first started doing the lessons some of them were so beautiful and so comforting, some went right over my head, and some I was obviously afraid of. Then I reached a point where I knew that I didn’t really understand any of them and I was afraid of all of them. Now I seem to be more accepting and less fearful. Speaking each one feels like a sacred moment, and each word is filled with meaning. These lessons feel like old friends returning with new gifts as I am more and more open to accepting them. I am learning not to struggle, and that I don’t need to wrestle the gift from the lesson; quiet, honest acceptance elicits meaning, and what I am not ready for will be disclosed later when I am less afraid.

What is interesting to me is that the longer I study and practice the simpler it all becomes. “God is but Love, and therefore so am I.” God is Love and nothing else. I am created like God and so I am only love. Nothing else is true. “I am as God created me.”  Every bit of evidence to the contrary is false because only this is true. All my fears and doubts are just the effect of imaginative child’s play and change nothing. I am still as God created me.

“Give me your blessing holy Son of God” is the request I make of each brother and what he gives me is truly a blessing. If it seems like an attack it is because I have mistaken who he is and so have forgotten who I am. I ask for his gift and do not judge it on appearances. I cannot judge on my own because the ego has taught me insane lessons of lack, fear and uncertainty. My vision is no longer clear and so I go to my Helper and ask clarity. I know there is only blessing from my dear brother and I am ready to see it as such.

I am so filled with gratitude this morning, and I ask that Holy Spirit come forward in my mind and accompany me as I enter the more active classrooms of this school. I have visited them with the ego and have not found it helpful.

Holy Spirit: Precious child, I have always been with you and will never leave you. I am part of you and it is My function to guide you. We are filled with love and gratitude for the vigilance you have shown as you practice the Course. We rejoice as we watch you slowly open your eyes and learn to see truly. For a while longer you will be tempted by the ego, and will be drawn back into the dream, but, as I have said before, never again will you be completely lost in it.

Myron, do not allow yourself to think of the ego as a powerful adversary. The Son of God has no adversary. The ego is just a thought. It is the thought that there is something other than God. In dreams it seems to have caused untold pain and fear. It is the thought of murder and guilt, but in the end it is only a thought.

How often have you thought one thing and then changed your mind? Because you have held this thought for so long and because you have defended it with layers of concealment you have made it seem something more than just a thought, but I assure you that is all it is. When you are ready you will simply stop thinking it, and all that will be left in your mind is the love of God.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Holy Spirit, Be With Me Today

Holy Spirit, I ask that you be with me all day today, helping me to keep my focus on what is true. When I allow my mind to wander into illusions of what might have been, or what I fear is to come, please remind me of the moment I am in now and that this is the only moment there is. It is in only this moment that I can choose again.

As I go through my day acting and reacting, please help me to bring my attention to my lesson understanding that the body and the world are just the classroom for the lesson. I often forget that this is true and begin to act as if the purpose of life is to change the classroom. Help me to keep the purpose of life clearly in the forefront of my mind.

When I stand before my brother I often see the body and its actions and errors. Please help me to see the light that stands behind this dark vision so that I may learn to see the light within myself. I will be mindful of the judgments I make of my brother’s behaviors and I ask that you correct my thinking so that I don’t foolishly believe my brother is his behavior any more than he is his body.

Holy Spirit, it is so easy for me to forget that the body and personality associated with Myron is just a story of separation, and that I can watch this story to help me remember the truth about who I am. Please help me to remember to step back from this dream figure and notice what she does and says rather than thinking I need to control what she does and says. I am tired of trying to fix the dream, and long to awaken from it, but at the same time, it calls to me and tempts me to once again enter it fully. I cannot do that because I no longer fully believe in the illusion, and yet cannot fully release it. Please help me as I learn to detach from the dream.

This morning it is quiet and easy to feel Your ever present help. I can rest in You, and feel deep gratitude for that rest. As others join me in today’s story I become distracted and feel like I have lost my contact with You. Please help me to see that this is not possible. Help me learn to rise above the battleground and to be aware of You within me all during the day no matter who joins me or what dramas distract me. Help me to see the dramas as lessons rather than distractions.

Amen.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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There is No Love But God’s

What does this lesson mean to me?
Because the world is the thought of separation, it tries to splinter even love, making it into different kinds, bestowed on some and not others, withheld where we don’t see it as deserved. If we could do this to love then we would have destroyed love because love is complete and cannot be changed or divided or withheld. It simply is.

This splintered and destroyed shadow of love that we claim as our own is not the love that is God. But love remains, unchanged and unharmed by our silly dreams, and waits for our acceptance. We only need make a place for it in our lives and it will fill us with its light and beauty, bringing an undisturbed state of peace and joy with it.

How can I apply this to my life right now?
I will make a place for love in my mind by clearing the clutter of my unloving thoughts. Of course I cannot clean house unless I can see what needs to be cleared away. So I will watch my thoughts closely and look for the ones that are not love. If I judge or withhold love or imagine that one person is more special than another then I have tried to make of love something it is not. I will bring those thoughts to the Holy Spirit and ask Him how I could see it differently.

My message from Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit, I understand the concept of love being equal, and in fact, I understand that it isn’t love if it is not equal in all ways and at all times. But I don’t understand how to do this. I have to say in all honesty that I love my kids more than someone else’s. I cannot seem to undo that feeling. And of course, that is just one example of how I fail to truly love. Could you please help me to understand how I am supposed to do this?

Myron, you distort love when you use it to fill your perceived needs. Your only true need is to remember that you are not separated from God and so are not separated from Love. Because you perceive yourself as lacking God’s love you continue to seek for love outside of God and outside of yourself. You are seeking in a place that does not exist and so you are never going to succeed.

You think you love your children more than other children because they seem to be filling your needs in a way others do not. You want to feel needed and appreciated and cared for and they seem to do that for you. You call this love and because they are giving it to you, your children are very important to you. You return the favor and make them feel like they are special to you and so you hope to sustain the feeling of being loved. It is an unholy bargain conceived out of a sense of lack.

Do not try to change how you feel or how you act. These are merely the effects and not the cause. Go to the thought that you could be separate from God, that you could fail to be worthy of His love, and that His love is something that can be changed or contained, withdrawn or withheld. Go to the thought that you can make of love what you will and that your creation will fulfill your needs. Go to the thought that you are so guilty that you dare not ask for God’s love to return to your awareness. These are the thoughts you need to look at with Me and that you need to give Me. I will take them from you and give you the thoughts of God to take their place.

My message to Holy Spirit
I must believe You when You tell me that I am using the word love to mean fulfillment of my needs because when you said that I responded with a fierce protectiveness. I felt a need to defend my strategy, as if You planned to strip me of what little love I am allowed. I know this is not true and not what You want to do, but on another level it is what I expect and fear. Thank you for helping me to see this.

I am reminded that God never asks for sacrifice, so I must be wrong to think that You are asking me to give up the love of my children. I know this is crazy. You are asking me to trust You to give me something better. I can almost laugh at this. I imagine myself a homeless woman clinging desperately to the card board box I have been sleeping in because someone is offering to trade it for a house. The card board box may not be much but it is all I know and I am being asked to trust the promise of something better but first give away all you have. That is what it feels like.

Myron, your defenses go even deeper than you realize. To accept the endless unchanging love of God is to reject the ego altogether. It is to let go of the idea of being separate, unique, different, which means deciding against being your own creator. Accepting the love of God is accepting wholeness and oneness. But you looked at your fear and you spoke it aloud and you are still here and nothing bad happened. That is the first step.

What I am asking you to consider is that accepting God’s love is not going to destroy you. You will not cease to exist if you bring your mind back to the Oneness that you are. I am asking you to hold My hand and walk through your fear with Me by your side.

Ok, Holy Spirit. I give this my willingness. I ask You to join Your willingness to mine and strengthen it.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Down the Rabbit Hole - Again

You know how you can have one of those days when, spiritually, you are just on a high? I was having one of those days. I had asked the Holy Spirit for a new way to see something that morning and had received an answer.  I had shifted from a problem to the answer, not through thinking, but through grace. I asked and it was given, and I was flying! Just in joy and peace.

I was driving down the road having visited a customer and on my way to see another. The customer I was planning to see next had a problem I was going to have to work out. It was, potentially, a serious situation depending on how things went. As I was thinking about how to handle this I had several thoughts really fast. I thought that this customer was putting a damper on my mood. I thought that if I did not do this right I was going to be in trouble with my boss. I thought how unfair that was and how much I resented him for putting so much pressure on me in a situation over which I had little control. I thought how I wish that I was home writing an article or talking to a student.

All of those thoughts took only a few seconds and I might not have paid much attention to them ordinarily. Just ego monkey chatter, the random firing of neurons that goes on all the time. The reason I noticed this day is because suddenly I was no longer feeling happy and peaceful. It was the change in my feelings that caught my attention. Since feelings always follow from thoughts I went back over the thoughts I just listed to see what changed my mood.

I began to see that it was like I had been walking on clouds and suddenly I fell into a hole. My immediate thought was Alice falling into the rabbit hole. Now I was following strange roads which were leading me deeper and deeper into a fantasy world of danger, fear, doubts, and blame. How did I get here? How could it happen so quickly? More importantly, how do I get out of this hole? And then suddenly, I was out! Just like that, I was out. I laughed to think of how easy it is to fall into ego stories and at the same time, it can be just as easy to let them go if that is what I really want to do.

I started paying really close attention to my feelings and my thoughts the rest of the day. Each time I realized that I had once again fallen into a rabbit hole, I looked around at the landscape to see what got me in there. Something that became very clear to me is that noticing quickly where I am and making a different decision is a lot easier than wandering through the illusory landscape for a while before I decide I want out. The longer I stay in the illusion the harder it is to find my way out.

If I stay in the story long enough it starts to feel so real and so compelling that it is difficult to let go of it. After awhile I become lost, and confused. I think vaguely of extricating myself but something else in the illusion grabs me, or I am hooked by the certainty that someone is wrong and must be punished, or at least admit their culpability. Or I begin to enjoy that little surge of adrenaline I get when I feel righteous and decide to enjoy it while it lasts.

There are so many distractions and so many hooks in this fantasy land. It is just one drama after another, and when I am no longer able to sustain the rush I get from feeling like I’m right, and the drama loses its glamour, I look around and wonder what to do now. It must be what one feels coming off a bender. Where am I, what happened? I feel a sense of shame and guilt and fear that I’m stuck. If I have stayed long enough and gotten too hooked into the story I might doubt my self worth and think I don’t deserve Holy Spirit’s help – again. Do you know that feeling?

No matter what ego thoughts are racing through my mind, the only way out is to want out. I have to want out of the hole more than I want to stay in it. That’s all there is to it. I become very aware of what I am thinking, I ask the Holy Spirit to help me see it differently, I allow that change, and poof! I’m out. I practiced this all day long and it got easier and easier. In fact by the end of the day I was no longer falling in the hole, I was standing over it and noticing it without any temptation to fall into the story at all.

I enjoy finding these little visual aids to help me go quickly from the story to the truth. Now when I become tempted to believe in an ego story I just picture Alice falling down the rabbit hole and this takes me right through the process of deciding differently.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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What is it?

I have had a rash for a couple of days now. It is on my right arm and around the waist on my left side. It is not horribly itchy but annoying and last night it was painful. I figured the pain was the result of being constantly irritated by my waistband on my pants. Then I thought about someone I know who had shingles and I wondered. So I googled shingles and learned very little except that it is usually on one side of the body. Uh, oh. It can also be painful. I looked for pictures of both shingles and poison ivy. They looked too much the same for me tell for sure. So I got out my pendulum and held it next to the affected area and it moved freely so I thought it couldn’t be anything so serious as shingles. But still, it was on one side and it was painful.

Finally I got dressed for bed and as I am laying there I realized that it doesn’t matter what this is. First, I didn’t get it from anything outside me. I chose this. I may have used the poison ivy plant to get the desired effect, but I cannot have anything in my life that I don’t want. So I looked at the rash again and thought what a grand rash it is. I loved myself for my creative ability and called it good.

Then I thought about the timing. Just recently I have been moving toward another shift and yesterday I made the commitment toward it. When I am threatening the ego thought system I often (on an unconscious level) set up something to bring myself back to its “reality” and the most compelling way to do this is to make the body sick. I checked in with myself and saw that it was not working. I don’t feel like a body. This is happening to the body, but I recognize what is going on and I see that I have not grabbed hold of that total identity with body that sometimes happens when the ego is saying, “see, you feel that? you are a body.) Yay for me!

Then I felt a gentle thought in my mind. It said “allow all things”.  So that is what I did. I accepted the rash and knew that it is what it is. I sprayed it down with some benedryl spray and went to sleep. I still have a rash, but I don’t have fear, doubt, and anxiety.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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