Together, We Light the Way

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Ordination Address

Because of a family emergency, I was not able to be at the last ordination ceremony at Pathways. I was very sad not to be able to pin my student, Mary Daw. Mary and I have worked so closely during her ministerial studies and have become such good friends. I was really looking forward to being part of her ordination, so I was really glad that she decided to have a ceremony for family and friends back home. Mary asked me to be part of her ceremony and so I spoke to her about being a minister of God, and presented her as Reverend Mary Daw. It was a wonderful moment. I would like to share with you what I said to Mary.

Mary, you are now coming to a new place in your spiritual journey as marked by your ordination. I am so pleased to join you in this celebration of your accomplishments. You have learned so much in the last year, and have grown in a way that is truly inspiring to those of us who have witnessed your transformation. Perhaps it feels like an ending, but let me assure you, it is not an ending, but the beginning of everything.

You have proclaimed yourself to be in service to God. I have said often that all of us are ministers whether we realize it or not. You, however, have consciously and before witnesses, claimed your place among the ministers of God.

Mary, this is not a time for false humility. ?Be not afraid nor timid.? Stand tall, stand proud, and speak the truth given you by the Holy Spirit. The world is hungry for God?s word. There is great need to be reminded that we are His children, and that He loves and cherishes us.

Nor is this the time for arrogance. As ministers it is our job to carry God?s messages, but not to decide what the message is. It is arrogance to think we should decide where to go, what to say and to whom. That is why the minister?s best prayer is, ?I will step back and let Him lead the way.?

It is arrogance masquerading as humility to think that you cannot do what is given you to do. God created you. He knows you as you are. It is not arrogance, Mary to accept yourself as you were created. Whatever it is given you to do, you can do it.

In perfect humility, Mary, know with an absolute certainty that as you step back, He will guide you to be where you are most needed. He will tell you where to go, what to say, and to whom. And in complete humility know that God will always provide the strength to do whatever He needs you to do. In deepest humility, Mary, know that God did not choose you wrongly.

And Mary, don?t for a moment think that in doing God?s work He is asking for sacrifice. God is your Father. He loves you and wants only joy for you. He has given you a function, and in fulfilling that function you will achieve happiness. It could be no other way because your function and your happiness are the same.

Mary, I would like to share with you some things I have learned as a minister that may be helpful to you. As a minister of God we need no defense. As with anyone there will be times when you experience yourself as attacked, and your first reaction may be to defend yourself. But what happens when you defend is that you see yourself as weak. The very act of defense is proclaiming that you are vulnerable, weak and in need of defense. And what you teach yourself, you are teaching your brother. Weakness will never be the message God needs you to share.

Your strength lies in your defenselessness. If someone says to me that I should not be a minister because I am a woman, or if someone questions my authority, or my spiritual path because it is different from their?s, I might want to defend my choices. It can be tempting to argue or reason with them, and try to win them over. But the truth is, I am fulfilling my function as given me by God through His Voice, the Holy Spirit. This needs no defense, nor do I need anyone to agree with me because I am certain in it.

And this is the message God would have me share. I am a child of God, created in His image and after His likeness. I am strong in God. I need no defense, and what is true about me, is true about each of us. God does not play favorites. He loves, equally, all that He created. He shares His strength with all His creations. Mary, let your every word and your every action teach the lesson you want to learn. Teach strength, not weakness. Teach defenselessness.

As ?A Course In Miracles? says, ?We rise up strong in Christ, and let our weakness disappear, as we remember that His strength abide in us. We will remind ourselves that He remains beside us through the day, and never leaves our weakness unsupported by His strength.

I have spoken of a minister as a messenger for God. Being a messenger for God is different than being a messenger for someone you know or work for. Mary, if I asked you to deliver a message to someone, you would simply take the message to that person and give it to them. Then chances are, you would forget all about it. Your life doesn?t change because you did me a favor and delivered a message.

In order to deliver a message for God, however, you must first receive that message, and in receiving it, the gift of the message becomes yours. It is only then that you deliver it. And on giving it you know that it is yours. So for instance, if God places someone in your path who is grieving, you will want to bring him the comfort of your Father. To do this you must first accept God?s comfort as your own. Otherwise, your words will just be words, and will lack conviction. You cannot give what is not yours.

As a minister of God, Mary, you are on a sacred path. All roads lead to God in the end, because, after all, where else is there to go? Most of us have spent our lives taking the long road to God, but you have now chosen to take the straight and narrow path. This is not to say that you will never again wander off course. Certainly I have. Nearly everyday I slip off the path, but like you, I have committed myself to making every effort to stay the course, and with the Holy Spirit?s gentle guidance we will be able to correct our errors and get right back on the path.

And finally, Mary, teach only love for that is what you are. You were created by a God of Love and you can be nothing else. To teach anything else is to confuse yourself about your identity. Teach love with each word that leaves your mouth. Teach love with all your actions. Teach love to remember who you are. Teach love that we might all remember who we are, that is children of Love. Let the light of your love go before you lighting the path for us all.

© 2006, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Seeing Past the Apparent to the Truth

What is becoming clearer to me all the time is that everone in my life is there for the purpose of helping me wake up, including this symbol I call Myron, and all the other bodies in my story. I know someone who is very bigoted in the most unpleasant of ways. When he is not expressing his bigotry, I like him very much, but this other side of him brings up the judgmental Myron in me.

What I can see now is that he placed all of these people he is prejudiced against in his life to give him a place to project his anger, frustration, and fear. It doesn’t matter what these people do or say, he will only see what he placed there.

It is not possible for him to see these people as part of his mind as long as he needs them to reflect his fear. At the same time, his higher Self, our mind, is using this same situation as a way to wake up. It is a movie of wrong-minded thinking- a way of seeing what it looks like, where it leads, and the lack of joy that results from it.

For me, my friend is the place where I put my judgment until I am able to lay judgment aside and see him as the Son of God he is. Everyone I see is just symbolic of a belief in the one mind. How can I be angry at a thought, or afraid or disdainful of a thought?

It is my intention to stop projecting my thoughts and to accept correction instead. When I look at someone, I want to recognize what it is they are symbolizing for me, thank them for that gift, forgive it, and allow the Christ to shine through instead.

© 2006, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Opportunities to Minister

How can you serve God in your daily life? Not everyone is called to ordination, though all of us are called to minister. The question is, how do you do that in the course of your everyday life? How do you minister while at home with your family, at work, in school?

The highest calling we can have, and the one that everyone has, is to model the life they were created to live. God created you to be joyful, peaceful, gentle, harmless, sinless; a perfect reflection of a perfect creator.

Suppose you were in a room with two people. One of them thinks of himself as shameful, fearful, guilty and sinful. This is what he believes about himself. He has made many mistakes in his life and all of them seem to prove these things about him. He wears his sins on his countenance, seeking to prove his humility and his deep regret. He lives in fear of retribution from an angry god.

The other person in the room has had a similar life, but has chosen to see his mistakes as errors to be corrected rather than sins that condemn him. He has forgiven himself, and those who were part of his life story. He wears his peace on his countenance, forgiving because he knows he is forgiven.

Which of these people do you think you would be drawn to? If you have a problem, who will you go to for an answer? Which one would you like to learn from? We are all ministers, but do we minister from God, or from our egos? God does not want our sacrifice, our fear, our guilt. We cannot minister for Him from these places.

God is a perfect God. How can we be a minister of God if we teach imperfection? And believe me, every word from our mouth and every action we take, and yes, even in our thoughts, we are teaching. It is never a matter of whether we teach; only what we teach.

I am ordained and have a formal ministry. But my ministry is not limited to those moments when I am in a church or when I am teaching or counseling. My ministry is 24/7, just as yours is.  My ministry extends to my workplace. When I go to work, I bring my joy in being a child of God. I smile at my co-workers, and ask about their lives; not because I feel like I should, but because I feel God?s love flow through me as I extend it to others. I do it for the joy of that feeling.

God is Love and so I was created as love by Love.  If I am not being love, then I forget who I am and in that forgetfulness I lose my joy. I guess I should say that I misplace my joy since I cannot lose what I am. I safeguard my joy by expressing my true nature.

At times I feel threatened by something going on at work. I become angry, frustrated, and fearful. When this happens, I lose my joy, and I am no longer teaching love. I am no longer ministering for God, but am teaching from ego. God is not angry with me for my forgetfulness, but He longs for me to bring my attention back to Him. He longs to share His love and His infinite joy with me.  This is why He placed His loving and patient Voice in me, so that I can always find my way back to Love.

If I want to be true to my ministry, then I have to remember who I am. I am the perfect creation of a perfect God. I am joy. I am love. I am sinlessness. I am wholeness. I am fearlessness. Does this sound arrogant? Perhaps in the eyes of the world that has forgotten who created it, this does seem arrogant. And yet, in God this is merely the truth. Is it arrogant to accept myself as God created me? Or is it true humility to stand back from my own judgments of who I am, and to accept as truth that I am ever as God created me.

And honestly, who am I to say that I could be different than God created me? Now that is the height of arrogance, don?t you think? ?Yeah God, you just think you did a good job with me, but what do you know?? I don?t think so. If God were less than perfect, then He could have messed up, but then He wouldn?t be God would He? Or if I were more powerful than God, then I could change what He created into something else. I am not so arrogant that I believe I am more powerful than God.

So, when I act in a way that is not in line with the truth of myself, then I must be mistaken in who I think I am. This error is not one I want to teach, and so I call on God to correct my thinking; to remind me of my true nature. This is the call He has been waiting for and He always answers it. When I return to my true nature, I am again doing what I was created to do; I am ministering for God.

Relationships are a wonderful opportunity to minister. What better place to practice extending love than with those brothers I am with ?one to one?? It can be a relationship of the briefest nature; a clerk in a store, a driver at an intersection, a child on the sidewalk, someone I will never see again. How can I minister in such a short time? I can extend love through a friendly smile, a wave, a kind word. Even a loving feeling unexpressed is very powerful.

I have a relationship with everyone I come in contact with. More extended relationships offer more opportunities to extend love, and more opportunities to remember who I am. How do I minister within these relationships? I stand fast in my vision of who they are. I know that each of these people is the perfect representation of their Creator. I do my best not to be distracted by their errors, and when I am, I ask the Holy Spirit to redirect my thinking. In other words, I look past their story to the truth of who they are. I see only the Christ in them.

Here is an example of this selective vision. I ask my child to do me a favor and he doesn?t want to take the time to do it. If I see this through the ego, I will be hurt, angry. I will think about all the things I have done for him, and how could he begrudge me a little favor. I will blame him for the disappointment and sadness I feel. I will make him guilty, make him wrong. I have brought our relationship from the level of perfect love to a process of bargaining. I will act as if I love you, if you act as if you love me.

So what have I taught him? I have taught him that sometimes he is love and sometimes he is selfish, and so he is something that changes with the whims of my evaluation of him. I have taught him that he is not what God created, but rather what he does and how other people judge what he does. Would God have that be my ministry? And as I have taught him this erroneous view of himself, I have learned it of myself, because what I teach I learn.

If instead, I choose to see the Christ in him, it would be very different. I hear him say that he can?t do it, but I have no judgment of those words. I don?t see him as wrong. I don?t blame him for anything. I don?t look at him and see selfish, self centered. When I look at him, I see only a symbol of God?s perfect love, and my love for him is perfectly unchanged and unmoved. My peace is undisturbed. My joy is full.

And, I have taught him that he is love. I have taught him that he is as God created him, completely unchanged by any story of himself that he might believe in. And, I have, in the process, taught myself that I am as God created me, because it cannot be true of me unless it is also true of everyone else. To be perfect, everything God created must be perfect.

This is equally true of every situation. Every situation is perfect for me. It is a perfect learning and teaching situation. It is perfectly designed to bring me to salvation. If I choose to recognize that this is true, then I can take full advantage of the situation to be a minister of God. How I approach the situations in my life will teach others who I am, and by extension, who they are.

If I were to be faced with a decision about my future that seems momentous, I would have to make a choice of which voice I would listen to, which teacher I would learn from. There are only two voices. Will I listen to the ego, or to the Voice for God. If I choose the ego, I am teaching myself that this is what I am; the product of a capricious god who sometimes guides me into pleasure and sometimes into pain, who seems to have my best interests in mind at times and other times seems to be a cosmic jokester.

If instead, when making decisions, I look to my highest self (that Voice for God placed in me for that purpose) I can absolutely know that I will be guided gently and lovingly to the answer that is in my best interests. It could be no other way. If God is Love, then He can respond only with love.  I can trust the answer I get from the Holy Spirit, and if it seems not to meet my expectations, I can know that it is my expectations that need to be adjusted.

I look at it like this: When I try to make decisions on my own, it is like I am looking at the world through eyes that see only what is directly in front of me. I don?t know what is to either side, or what is ahead. How could I make a good decision like that? How could I possibly know what would be the results of my decision; how it would affect me in the future, and how it would affect those in my life?

Instead, I could look with eyes that see in every direction at once, and see far into the future, that know every thing that has ever happened, and that will happen. This is what I am doing when I ask the Holy Spirit to guide me. If I am not certain of His answer, I ask Him to open the door I should go through, and to firmly close the door that I should avoid.

I know my ultimate goal is to return to my Father, and so I want every decision I make to bring me closer. The Holy Spirit and I are on the same page here, and He will always give me the answer that will move me in that direction. I do not judge what that answer looks like; I just know it is perfect.

So how does this work out for me? What kind of minister am I? Well, sometimes I do better than other times.  But even my mistakes can be a part of my ministry. As I turn them over to God for correction, I am modeling how to deal with error.  A Course in Miracles says, ?The Holy Spirit is not delayed in His teaching by your mistakes. He can be held back only by your unwillingness to let them go.?  What a joyful way to go through life, knowing that I do not sin but only err, and that the Holy Spirit stands ready to correct all errors. All He needs is my willingness it be done. Being a minister of God asks no sacrifice on my part, and gives me all I could ask for; love, peace, and joy.

 

© 2006, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Goodby Guilt

Remember the story in the Bible about the people who wanted to stone the prostitute? Jesus said that the one who was free of sin should cast the first stone. He knew that the prostitute was safe because no one there would have a clear conscience. He knew this because the desire to blame and condemn others comes from our desire to project our own guilt outside of ourselves.

We feel guilty and we don?t like that feeling so we try to get rid of it. We find someone else to blame, to shame, to condemn. What an awful cycle we have going. We have chosen to see our mistakes as sin, and so ourselves as evil when we make these mistakes. We spend our lives hiding from these sins by making someone else guilty.

Guilt, doubt, self recrimination, these are the chains that hold us to our smallest self. Who has not made errors; drank too much, ate too much, spent too much money, spoken harshly, any one of hundreds of errors on a daily basis? What are we supposed to do with these errors? Are we to allow them to bury us, for certainly they will if we accept them as the truth of who we are?  Am I a glutton because I ate too much? Am I a bad person because I spoke harshly when I could have offered comfort instead? Or are these just actions I took?

I will not be defined by my actions. I am the perfect creation of a perfect God. I will not hide the truth of myself behind mistaken actions. I have a choice. I don?t have to look at anything I?ve ever done as a defining moment. I can see these moments as simple learning opportunities.

What am I learning? I am learning to see myself as a creation of an awesome God. I am removing from my life all the mistaken thoughts that block my awareness of my true nature. As I do this, my actions begin to mirror my newly remembered truth. I begin, more and more, to act like the person I was created to be. This is easy to say, but we have not had a lot of practice thinking this way and most of us don?t know how to do it. We need a guide; someone to show us the way. Luckily we have a willing and able guide through the Holy Spirit.

Before we can feel comfortable going to the Holy Spirit for help, we have to learn to trust God. We have to trust that He loves us and isn?t angry with us. We have spent our lives hiding out from God thinking that He has been angry with us since Adam and Eve, and that every bad thing we do just makes it worse. Our only help is God and if we are afraid of Him we have no help, do we? Am I likely to bring my darkest thoughts to God and ask Him to correct them, if I think He is going to condemn and punish me for them?

We have been misinformed when we were told that God is a harsh God. We have also been told that God is Love and that is the truth about Him. It is only our fear that makes us believe anything else. The reason for this fear is that in our minds we have made God look like us instead of the other way around. And we didn?t choose our highest self, the self that in an accurate reflection of our creation, but rather our smallest, meanest self as the mirror in which to see God.

It is time to give God credit for being the Creator. I am not the creator of God. I am not going to see God as harsh, angry and vengeful. These things are not loving and God is Love. I can forget who I am, but God does not forget Who He is.  And, He knows who I am because He created me. He is not deceived by my mistaken beliefs. God is not changed by my thoughts about Him, and neither am I changed by my thoughts about myself. What God creates, remains forever as He created it.

Julia Cameron wrote in Answered Prayers: Love Letters from the Divine, ?My will for you is not harsh or unpleasant. It is gentle and perfectly tailored to your unique needs. Do not fear my direction. I am your heart?s happiest guide.? This is an apt description of what we can expect from the Holy Spirit, the Voice for God within us. Rather than trying to rid ourselves of our guilt by projecting it onto others and onto the world, and even onto God Himself as we have done in the past, we can turn to God with this guilt and let Him reveal to us the truth about ourselves.

We can trust God to love us and to care for us, to bring us comfort and guidance, and never to condemn us. If I know that God loves me, and I know nothing else, I know enough. Instead of trying to hide my sin by seeing it in others, I can give my sin to the Holy Spirit, and let Him show me what to do with it.

He will show me that my error is not who I am; that I simply listened to the wrong voice, and so made a wrong choice. He will remind me that a mistake is not a sin, and that I am still part of God my Father. He will gently remind me that there is another Voice. I can listen to Him instead. It will take practice and patience, but is not a child of God worth patience?

What is most helpful to me is to remember that all errors are just thoughts.  If I am doing something wrong and feel guilty, I want to stop doing it. However, if I haven?t changed the thought that precipitated the action, I will just do it again. As I continue to repeat the action, thinking it is wrong, then the feeling of guilt becomes cemented, and I start to think of myself as bad. I hate the way that feels, so I look around for someplace to put the blame.

The place to make the change is at the level of thought. Changing behavior is a temporary fix at best. When I focus on behavior I am overlooking the cause and nothing is really going to change. No matter how big the error seems, how miserable I have made myself through believing in the error, it is just a thought, and a thought can be changed. Changing the thought and a change in behavior will follow.

So, how do we get into the blame game? This can be observed in any relationship. For example, John wants to buy a new gun and Ann says they can?t afford it right now. John knows this is true, but really wants that gun and convinces himself that it is a deal of a lifetime and buys it anyway. Then he feels guilty about going behind Ann?s back and about spending money he couldn?t afford.

John is pretty uncomfortable with this feeling so he starts thinking that Ann always buys what she wants. She?s always telling him how to spend the money. She?s always bossing him around. If she showed him some respect sometimes, he wouldn?t have to do things like this. He feels like he was pushed into an untenable situation by Ann?s unreasonable attitude. That Ann is so guilty, and John is now just her hapless victim.

If John wants to stop this vicious cycle he will have to change his mind about making Ann guilty. Sometimes it can be hard to withdraw the blame, especially if you have spent a lot of time building a case against the other person. Sometimes all you can think of is the seemingly obvious fact that they really did this to you.

What I have found true, is that I don?t want anyone to be guilty. I don?t want to be guilty, and I don?t want the other person to be guilty. If I believe in your guilt, then I have made it clear that guilt is a real thing and so I can be guilty, too. We are one, you and I, and if you are guilty then I am guilty. I want to move completely out of the guilt story.

Once John decides to withdraw the blame he had projected onto Ann, he wonders what to do with the guilt. Surely someone has to be guilty, right? And if it is not Ann, it must be him. At first, this part can be painful because there is a temptation is to internalize the guilt.  But that was the old way of thinking. This is the time to stop bouncing the guilt around and to completely undo it.

Now John is learning that finding and placing guilt is not helpful. If a mistake was made, it is only further error to move into guilt. Jesus has taught us that the way to undo guilt is through forgiveness and love. Even at the crucifixion, having been publicly beaten and nailed to a cross, Jesus continued his mission of showing us how to live. Did he take this moment to condemn and blame? No, he forgave. He was showing us that forgiveness is the proper response to whatever seems to be happening.

And he didn?t try to move the guilt to someone else. He didn?t say that if only the apostles had stayed awake in the garden with him, he?d never been captured so it must be their fault. He didn?t say that if Judas had not betrayed him he wouldn?t be up here. He did not try to accept the blame himself by saying if only he had not been so openly defiant of the authorities. Blame did not enter into this at all. His response was forgiveness which saw no blame in anyone.

Forgiveness is love and love is forgiveness. Jesus taught me that my only response to error of any kind is forgiveness and love. Our friend, John, could have blown the whole blame and guilt story out of the water if he had recognized his own innate goodness, and then seen his actions as errors rather than sin. This would have placed him in the position of choosing differently rather than using projection to protect himself from the intolerable burden of guilt.

If he was confused about this, it was only because he forgot what God is, and so forgot what he is. When he remembers that God is love, he will be able to see that thoughts of blame, anger, fear, and guilt cannot be coming from God, because they are not love. If they are not coming from God, they are not true, and call only for correction. Correction will never be blame and guilt, but will always be love and forgiveness. Life is just a series of thoughts brought into action. Change your thought, and your life changes. Bring your thoughts into alignment with your true nature, which is love, and your life will reflect the Will of God. Goodbye guilt, blame and condemnation.

 

© 2006, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Special Relationships

Most of our relationships are based on the belief that we are not whole, that we are missing some vital piece of ourselves, and that we can get that missing part if we just hook up with the right person.  We seldom are aware, on a conscious level, just what it is that we are missing. So here we are with this fuzzy idea that something is missing and that someone else can complete us. I don?t know how we expect to find that missing piece when we don?t even know what it looks like.

The reason we feel incomplete is because we feel separate from God. I am a child of God, created by Him, created in His image and after His likeness. And yet, am I truly comfortable with that definition of myself, or do I try to keep a barrier between me and my Creator? Because if I do, if I think there should be some gap between us, a place where neither God is, nor am I, then I am going to feel incomplete, less than whole.

And so that is why I spend my life trying to achieve that sense of wholeness. I look for ways to identify myself as a whole person. I try to become special in whatever way I think will work. Most of us start out dreaming of success and wind up settling for much less, but always we seek for some elusive thing that says I am special in some way. Some people look for specialness on the other side of the street. I am especially bad, or especially lost, especially dysfunctional.

Our true identity as a child of God needs nothing to improve upon it. It is complete in itself, but how many of us believe in our true self, the perfect self that God created? If that person is listening to this sermon, you can just take a little nap, because I?m not talking to you. I?m talking to the rest of the folks who feel like they have a bottomless hole in their soul that just cannot ever be filled.

I?m talking to the people who eat when they are not hungry because they mistakenly think that food will fill up that hole. I?m talking to the people who think that alcohol or drugs will satisfy that emptiness. I am addressing this to the folks who think Dillards is the god of happiness, or at least it is his favorite home. Have you ever indulged in an ?if only? fantasy; you know, if only I won the lottery or if only I found that perfect soul mate? If you think that your next partner is going to be your savior, then I am talking to you.

I am talking to you because none of those things is going to complete you. Nothing outside of your mind can add to who you are. You are already whole and complete. What would the perfect creation of God need to make him self better? So if this is true, and logic tells us it is, then what happened? How did we get to the place that we find ourselves?

We all feel like something is missing. If we didn?t then we wouldn?t be spending all our money on stuff we sell at the next garage sale.  How many people do you know who have been divorced at least once? Let me make this easier, ?How many people do you know who have never been divorced?? I read an article that referred to first marriages as throw away marriages.

Where did this attitude come from? It comes from the idea that we are not complete, and that our completion comes from outside ourselves. We think that if only we found our perfect soul mate, then we would be complete. If the truth were to be known we are saying, ?I?m looking for you to help me feel more special to make up for the feelings of lack and unworthiness I experience in myself.?(from 905: Special Relationships Vs Holy Relationships) And so we set out on the hunt for the one who will help us feel whole and worthy, and when we are not in a relationship the attitude is that something is wrong. And that if we are in a relationship and we are not happy, it must be that we made a mistake in choosing our partner and that it is time to move on.

Sometimes it is time to move on. There are legitimate reasons for doing so. However, if you are looking for happiness in your partner or anyone or anything else, you are going to be disappointed. We get out of a relationship what we bring to it. Cinderella is a fairy tale. We do not get married because we want to live happily ever after. Well, often we do, but it doesn?t work that way.

Relationships are a wonderful classroom, a place where we can do real work toward revealing our true self. When we go into a relationship with this spiritually mature attitude, we can make great headway. Look at your relationships, romantic or otherwise, and ask yourself some questions about your expectations. Why do you want to be in this relationship? What do you want to get out of it? What do you expect the other person to do for you?

When I was married, I expected to get someone to talk to, to wake up next to. I expected to be special to that man, to be first in his loyalties, to be first in his love. I expected him to be true to me and to love me even when I got old. I had many expectations.  I am certain he had many expectations of his own, and I am certain he was as disappointed in his expectations as I was.

What if I felt absolutely complete in myself? Would I have needed him to make me feel special and loved? If I am complete and whole, I don?t need anything. So what if I went into a relationship knowing that I don?t experience myself as I really am, but that I want to, and that I want someone to join me on this path.  My relationship would still have many challenges, but now ?I? becomes ?we?; we are working together in full support of each other as we grow spiritually.

In a practical sense, what is the difference? Ok, let?s use the first relationship as an example. Jim and Susan are involved in a typical special relationship. They both want the other to be loyal. They want each to be first in the other?s life. Jim and Susan are supposed to be going out to eat. Jim says that he has changed his mind about going out because his friend wants him to help carpet his new living room. Susan becomes defensive. She has an agenda. She wants to be first in his loyalties and now feels betrayed. She feels that her agenda has been threatened, and since her agenda reflects her need to be made special, it feels like a personal attack. He is taking away her sense of specialness.

Feeling attacked, Susan quickly designs a defense strategy. She decides to go for the old tried and true guilt trip. ?How could you choose him over me? We never get to do anything together. I already bought a new dress and did my hair.? In other words, ?Feel so guilty that you give me my way.? Susan is speaking not from her true self, but from her ego which is in constant battle, with guilt being the glue that holds its relationships together. (From 905: Special Relationships vs. Holy Relationships)

Now Jim feels guilty, and in need of defense. So he thinks up a defense strategy. He decides to take the offensive and convince Susan that she is a selfish, self-centered, umm, ?witch.? The battle escalates. And that is what they have now; not a loving relationship, but a pitched battle, one of many in a war that they call a marriage.

This does not have to be the way it is. The relationship became a battleground because of the purpose they gave it. They set up this inevitable result when they decided that the purpose of the relationship was to get something from the other.

Course 905: Special Relationships VS Holy Relationships expresses this succinctly: In truth, love in this world of bodies really means, ?I want to be special, but I also feel alone, lacking and unworthy, which I can?t stand. Will you be my special partner and promise to keep your body around and help me feel special? This will help submerge my pangs of loneliness, lack and unworthiness. I will get the specialness, acknowledgment and attention I want so desperately. In return I will shower you with specialness. I will agree to give special attention to you and shower you with my exclusive ?love.? Through our alliance in being special partners, we will avoid the side-effects of loneliness and guilt that our desire for specialness brings. We will be happy our way, in our little world of specialness. We will be each others idols and replace the Love of God.?

This doesn?t have to be. We can choose differently. We can recognize our oneness in God and by setting a clear intention to express that truth of our selves; we open our mind to the Holy Spirit for the healing of those specialness thoughts. We don?t have to do it alone, and in fact cannot do it alone, but to receive His help, we need only to look honestly at what we are doing and ask for correction.

Suppose they had chosen another purpose. A Course in Miracles says, ?The value of deciding in advance what you want to happen is simply that you will perceive the situation as a means to make it happen.? Can you see how different that will make things? Suppose their purpose in having a relationship was to support each other in their spiritual growth, and to learn to have a relationship built on unconditional love rather than special love. In this case, when Jim decided to back out on the event, Susan might still be angry because she wanted to go out. However, because of their shared purpose, it would not have to escalate into war.

Susan could express her disappointment in the change of plans without needing him to capitulate. The need to be right that was experienced in the first relationship stemmed from a need to be special. It stemmed from a need to have specialness make her feel whole. In the second relationship, she still experienced the need to be special, but she will probably recognize that error because it is her intention to see things differently.

Jim is her partner in this process and wants to help her get there. He knows that giving in to her perceived needs may not be the most loving thing to do in this situation, because that would be reinforcing the idea of special guilt relationships. So he may still go to help his friend, but because he understands the dynamic he doesn?t feel personally attacked, and so is able to be loving in the situation. Even when they slip into the attack/defend mode, they both know that this is not the answer, that specialness is not the goal, and so at some point one of them will get off the merry go round.

The point is that whoever is saner at the time can stop the cycle of attack and defend. It doesn?t matter who does it because no one is trying to win on a personal level. They recognize that unless both of them win, neither wins. They are in this together. No one is trying to get something from the other.

Just recognizing that we are trying to complete ourselves through our relationships and that this never works is enough to open our mind to another possibility. There is a way to be in relationships that honors our self and our partner by honoring God as our Creator. We can achieve this by looking honestly at our relationships and asking the Holy Spirit to correct our errors. 

© 2006, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Transforming Your Life

Here is a good question for you. Are you happy with your life? If you were to die tomorrow would you feel satisfied with what you have accomplished, with the way you have lived your life? It?s kind of funny, but one of the things that got me moving in my life was reading the obituaries, which, by the way, was a practice my kids thought was pretty morbid. As I tried to explain to them, at a certain time in your life this is as good a way as any to keep up with old classmates and acquaintances.

But anyway, one day while I was reading the obituaries, I wondered what my obituary would say, and realized it would be really short. I?m not saying I had not done anything with my life, but it did make me start thinking about how I would feel if I died today. What could be said of my life? I set an intention at that moment to do something about my obituary. I decided to live my life in such a way that I would leave a legacy when I went.

This was not a well formed intention, but it was an open door and I went through it. We are Sons of a Creative Force and therefore we are creative, as well. Our intentions are powerful, and if followed through, will transform our lives. Rev. Jack Boland said, ?March forth-and transform your life. Be the person God intends you to be.?

I can?t say that at the moment of the original intention I began marching forward. That was more of an intention to set an intention, but even that was enough to set my life in a new direction. The Universe wants us to succeed, and will conspire to assure our success with only the least invitation.

However, the Universe does not do it for us; It does it with us. Setting an intention is the important first step, but it is just one step. Once we decide to be the person God intends us to be, He provides us with all the support we will ever need. Previously closed doors open, but we must walk through them.

An important thing I learned was that transformation does not take place outside me; it is the work of the mind. Oh, I can learn to use the power of intention to manipulate my world; my job, my finances, my health, my home, all of that. But this doesn?t really change anything. It is like a child spending endless hours rearranging building blocks. It may be entertaining for awhile, and distracting, and even briefly satisfying. But at the end of the day, you just have building blocks. And after all the hard work, someone can just come along and knock them over.

The kind of change I am talking about is real. Change your mind and your world changes. Bring your thoughts in alignment with God?s plan for you, and the world sinks into insignificance. What is it that God wants for you? He wants you to experience yourself as He created you. He wants you to be like Him. He wants you to wake up from this bad dream you are having and realize that you are still as He created you and that you are still part of Him, and He is part of you.

I am not suggesting that there is anything about your true nature that needs to be changed. You are perfect the way you are. There is nothing about you that is wrong or needs to be fixed. We do not have to improve upon God?s creation. The change I am talking about is one of experience. If you are not experiencing yourself as God created you, then there is a way to change that experience. There is a way to awaken from the dream of lack and limitation, and to experience the abundance of God.

There are steps you can take to bring you to this awakened state. The first step is intention. I set an intention to wake up and know God. I didn?t know how to do this, but I did know I wanted to. It has been a stop and go process because this was not my only intention. When my focus is on God, my life begins to take that form. I am peaceful. I experience love, both in the giving and receiving. I am joyous.

When my mind wanders to other goals, things change. I spend my time and energy trying to make life conform to these new goals. I struggle and fight and work hard for little gain. Even when I do attain what I think will make me happy, I am inevitably disappointed.  It all seems so hard because I am fighting my own nature. When I acknowledge my Creator and thus my own true nature, I move back into the ease of being a child of God. Nothing else fits me like that role because nothing else is worthy of me as a Son of God.

Once I set my intention to live the life God has planned for me, I needed to develop some mind training. The problem is that my mind wanders. I intend to keep my mind on my goal, to make this my only goal, because a split mind in ineffective, but I get easily distracted. I chose A Course in Miracles as my vehicle for mind training. There are others to choose from, but this one suits me and offers a faster, surer way than most.

So the way this works for me, is that I designed a practice around the Course. The Course has three parts and one of them is a workbook with a lesson for each day of the year. I get up in the morning and make a cup of coffee. With my coffee in hand, I begin to read my lesson.  I plan carefully so that I have time to do this. If I have to be someplace early, I plan the night before to wake early enough to do this. I make time for God in my life. In fact, I make sure that God comes first in my life.

It is so easy to find excuses for putting this time off. Life intrudes with seemingly urgent problems. I choose not to respond to these. I put my trust in God. I know that if I give my attention to God first, everything else will fall in line. This is my trust and it does not fail me. I make my commitment and I show up for my commitment.

Rituals can be an important part of a spiritual practice.  Once practiced, they send a signal to yourself that it is time to set aside all distractions and begin your sacred work. Some people like an elaborate ritual with candle lighting and gentle music. Some incorporate yoga and lengthy meditations.  It is helpful to plan a quiet time that will not be interrupted and to use the same process everyday, a repeatable pattern of behavior that becomes an automatic call to your attention. Because I am often in different places when I wake up, I have created a very simple ritual, but I adhere to it daily.

My spiritual practice does not end with my daily lesson and meditation. My life is my spiritual practice. I practice being aware, that is paying attention to my life. It is through the stories of my life that I can see where my thoughts need correction. I don?t focus on changing the behavior because then I am back to playing with the blocks again. But particular behaviors signal a need to examine my thoughts.

So much of our life is spent in a fog of inattention. We say and do things without even noticing what is going on. Our life just seems to happen to us without our input because we aren?t paying attention, and are not examining our thoughts to see what caused our life to take that turn. Our life is not someone else?s fault, nor did it ?just happen.? Our life is the cumulative effect of our thoughts.

From the spiritual intention of the morning?s ritual, I open my mind to God?s Voice within me. Throughout the day I deliberately ask for guidance. It is not that God needs to be reminded, but that I need to remind myself to step back and let Him lead the way. Through my attentive focus, I notice when my thoughts are not leading me to peace, and I ask for correction. When I am uncertain what to do with circumstances in my life, I ask God how He wants me to use this. It is in this way that my life becomes my spiritual path.

Love is at the heart of every spiritual practice because God is Love. And because God is Love, so are we who were created in His image. To live my life according to God?s plan I must live a life of love. This is not romantic love, though God?s love can be expressed in this situation, too. It is not a special love for a special person. God?s love is impersonal. It is the same for everyone. Nothing is outside God?s love because nothing is outside God. This is my model. I do my best to express universal love; loving without conditions or limits.

Universal love is expressed as patience because I know that God?s Will must be done and so I can afford to wait. It is expressed as compassion because I know that none of us experiences our true Self all the time. It is expressed as devotion because we are all one in God, and my brother deserves my devotion. It is expressed as service because service to my bother is service to the Creator of my brother.

So, am I happy with my life? Yes I am. I am not living a perfect life, but I do the best I can every day. I start and end my day with prayer and I look to God for guidance in all things. I am, more often than not, at peace. I am happy. I don?t know that my obituary will read any different, but I know that at the end of my life I will leave a legacy. I will have made a difference in the world. You won?t read about my contribution in any history books, but the people in my life know they are loved and appreciated. My legacy will be to have lived the life God planned for me to the best of my ability.

© 2006, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Pandora’s Box

Diversity is a great thing in theory, but in the practice of it, there are many challenges. Working and living side by side with people who are not like you in race, culture, sexual orientation, spiritual beliefs, politics, education or economic station can bring up a lot of garbage for us. It can bring up prejudices and discomfort that we didn?t even know we had.

Not that this is a bad thing. How are we going to experience a healing of these separation devices if we don?t look at them, and how are we going to look at them if we don?t know they are there? And please know that this healing is our purpose in life. Recognizing the unconditional nature of love is our function. Unity, the recognition that we are one in God, rather than many in the world, is why we are here, and we cannot know this if we think we are different. Galatians 3:28 says, ?There is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave nor free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ.?

Every time we look at another person and think, ?This person is not like me,? we separate ourselves from our brother, and in our mind, this separates us from God. God knows us as He created us, not as we imagine ourselves to be. To know God, we must release our own creation and accept ourselves as He created us. If we do not know God?s creation, we cannot know God.

Separation is what was really in Pandora?s Box. In separation we move from one perfect and holy creation of God, to many different forms that exist in bloody competition with each other, fighting endlessly for their share of a limited supply. We don?t have to worry about going to hell, we put ourselves there already with our belief in separation.

Diversity sounds like a good idea at first. It is the idea of many different kinds living side by side peacefully. In the world, it is a lofty idea. In truth it is just another effort to keep our own version of creation in place of God?s. Being separate and constantly at war with each other over one thing or another is pretty wearing, so we?ll keep our individuality and just put up with each other. So, what are the chances of that working? How often has it worked in the past?

What really happens is that when I see someone as different from me I judge whether this is good or bad. Jesus warned us about judging. It doesn?t lead to wholeness. When I look at the person in front of me and I think they are in error, I know that I am the one in error.

I am reminded of something very wise that I read. It said, ?Do not worry about the condition of your brother?s mind. He has been given that part of the mind to heal, not you. And God?s Voice is with him intimately in that process.? So I step back from my judgment of my brother and know that he does not need my correction; he has God?s help.

How do I get back to remembering who I really am; to know myself as God created me? First I recognize that the self I am experiencing now is not the perfect creation of God. Then, I decide that I must have been mistaken and ask for correction.  At first it takes some practice to even recognize these mis-thoughts. After all, even in my mind I don?t turn to the one next to me and say ?You are different from me, and so I suspect you of being my enemy.? However, I may turn to the one next to me and think, ?That person is taking the chair I always sit in,? which is the first step toward guilt, hatred, war. Pandora?s Box has been opened.

Instead of being part of my One Self, this person with whom I came to join, is now my enemy, the person who took my favorite chair. I have made him guilty. I have made him my competitor, my enemy. Now we are at war; who can get to the favorite chair first becomes my objective rather than how can I love my brother and experience my unity with him. I talk about unconditional love, but my ?love? has a condition now; stay out of my chair!

Does this sound like a silly example? I read an article recently about a woman who killed her husband. They were going to watch television together and he took her chair, and wouldn?t give it back. She got their gun and shot him. Conditional love isn?t love. It is a bargain at best, and at its extreme it is war.

Perhaps you think that unvoiced thoughts don?t count. But they do count. We kid ourselves when we think we have private thoughts. Our thoughts are shared in a million little ways. If I think you are my enemy because you took my chair, you may not know what my problem is, but you will feel my withdrawal. You may not even be able to put your finger on what is wrong, but you will know, perhaps unconsciously, that something is not right.

We cannot think one way and act another. What we think is who we are, and while we have learned to put on a false face for civilities sake, the truth of our thoughts will show themselves in many ways. We move a few inches further away, our greeting lacks enthusiasm, our hug is half-hearted.

If we harbor our resentment long enough, our anger becomes more overt until it eventually becomes verbalized. It may come out as gossip rather than direct confrontation, and often we choose something unrelated to the original slight to actually verbalize, but it will show itself in some way. The slighted person feels the need to self defend, and the war escalates.

Even if we never saw the person again, if we harbor the resentment, that relationship is affected and we are affected. In truth we are one mind. How can my brother not be affected by what is in my thoughts. Hugh Prather, in an article on relationships, suggested sending silent messages of blessing to your partner. He said,“This practice is far more powerful than any spoken words could ever be… .” The same is true for unspoken words of separation. They are just as real as the spoken word, and have effects on the relationship.

The whole sordid mess could be avoided if I recognize the signs and act on them immediately. Someone takes my favorite chair and I feel a twinge of resentment. I see it for what it is, and ask the Holy Spirit to give me another way to think of this. The war is over before it begins. I remain in peace and am happy. I am also much closer to God now. So are you, because we are one creation and so what lifts me up lifts you as well.

The diversity of any group is not laudable because many different people come together to remain different, separated into our own little worlds by our perceived differences. It becomes a holy encounter as we gather for the purpose of shedding our differences and recognizing our oneness in God.

We do not reach the peace and joy that God means for us by ridding ourselves of people who don?t fit within the walls of our self made world, but rather by using these encounters for healing, and thus allowing those walls to come down. Our walls do not protect us; they imprison us in our separation. As we reinforce our separation from each other, we reinforce our feeling of separation from our Creator.

We have all built up thick walls of separation which we believe are protecting us from each other. It requires great faith and much work to learn a different way. But in our beliefs, we have set that as our intention. If we keep our eye on our goal it cannot fail, because it is in alignment with the Will of God.

© 2006, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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