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Gentle Healing Lesson 133, Manual for Teachers, Text.  4-29-19

LESSON 133
I will not value what is valueless.

“You do not ask too much of life, but far too little.”

How is it that I ask for too little? I used to think that I wanted things that the body would enjoy. That was my goal, to have money, a perfect relationship, a better body, more fun, good sex. I got a lot of stuff, not everything I thought I wanted, but a great deal of it. None of that made me happy, and what is the point of any of it if it doesn’t make me happy. I got temporary pleasure, but that’s it.

I’m reminded of our president. He has money, prestige, fame, lots of women and sex, he’s even president of the United States for pete’s sake. But he doesn’t, as far as I can tell, seem very happy. How much is enough? When does the accumulation of our worldly desires bring us happiness? Jesus is telling us that it never will, that we are reaching too low. He says that there are no satisfactions in this world.

“Today we list the real criteria by which to test all things you think you want. Unless they meet these sound requirements, they are not worth desiring at all, for they can but replace what offers more.”

I have proven for myself that my criteria for happiness were not working. I like how Jesus simplifies it for us. We don’t get to decide on the laws of choice or the alternatives from which we can choose. But we do get to choose, and in fact, we must choose. I will say that we do choose, rightly or wrongly, we choose. The problem has been that we do it half-hazardly without regard to the laws we set in motion when we choose.

These are the laws that govern choice.

“We have already stressed there are but two, however many there appear to be.”

“Another kindly and related law is that there is no compromise in what your choice must bring.”

We only have two choices, reality or illusion, God or ego, what has value and what is valueless. It only seems like there are endless choices we can make because we confuse form with content. Jesus is going to tell us how this works. He also says that there is no compromise in the effects of our choice.  Jesus says that each choice you make brings everything to you or nothing. I love this. It feels simple and safe, something I have not felt before when I believed life was complicated and dangerous and so very hard to figure out.

Here are the tests that explain how to make the best choice.

“First, if you choose a thing that will not last forever, what you chose is valueless.”
“Next, if you choose to take a thing away from someone else, you will have nothing left.”
“Why is the choice you make of value to you?”
“If you feel any guilt about your choice, you have allowed the ego’s goals to come between the real alternatives. And thus you do not realize there are but two, and the alternative you think you chose seems fearful, and too dangerous to be the nothingness it actually is.”

What stands out to me the most is that I choose between everything and nothing. That which does not last is nothing dressed up to look like something. That’s why money and fame and all of the other is of no value whatsoever, it is nothing, it is only an illusion of something. Does this mean that I should not have any of this? I don’t think that is what he is saying. What I don’t want to do is to waste my time striving for these things thinking they are going to make me happy.

If I were to find myself in a script where I am rich and famous, the question would be how can this be used in a way that makes it valuable? What we make for ourselves can be used by the Holy Spirit if we are willing. This makes me think of Oprah Winfrey. She has money and fame and has used it to be kind and helpful and to promote higher spiritual ideas. She has not let it keep her from looking within and letting her mind be healed.

“Heaven itself is reached with empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own. “

More and more I am coming to realize that this is how the mind is healed. Just let go of everything and approach awakening with confidence. I begin my meditations by saying, “Here I am, God.” That is all that is needed. That is me without any instructions for Him. Ha ha. It is me coming with empty hands and an open mind ready to receive what is given.

Whatever I say afterward, that is to be the contemplation of the day is always open-ended. For instance, I might say that I want to know my Self. Or if it is a contemplation on the lesson it will be like today’s, which is actually just a variation on wanting to know my Self. Everything that I am learning through A Course in Miracles is to bring me to the point of knowing my Self which is in union with my brothers and with God.

“I will not value what is valueless, and only what has value do I seek, for only that do I desire to find.”

Regina’s Tips

Let me start by saying that the ego is inherently selfish. The ego always thinks of ‘me’ and ‘mine.’ It has no other point of view. Spirit, on the other hand, thinks only of purpose and wholeness. It has a broad perspective, and ‘me’ is completely unimportant. That doesn’t mean that the individual is sacrificed. The individual is loved as part of the whole, which is completely different than the selfishness of the ego.

I will also say that one of the most challenging things to teach is dropping selfishness. The ego is extremely protective of it. Yet, if you are to know the heart of truth, selfishness must be let go.

My thoughts
Regina has a way of getting right to the heart of the idea presented. I am very grateful to her for this. I am going to post her example here because it is perfect. I think I mostly do this, but I want to always use these criteria for making decisions.

Regina’s example
Today’s workbook lesson is excellent in its practicality if you will use it that way. I did. The effect for me was that I saw my own selfishness in a way I had not seen it before, and this generated a change in me from a selfish perspective to a perspective of service.

When I first used this was during that period of time when Ron and I had agreed to marry, and then I began to sense that he was going to back out. I told that story in last Sunday’s service. (I will provide the link to the audio in the comments section below.)

At first my response to realizing he would back out was a lot of ego chatter. That chatter was focused on ideas about how I could still get what I wanted. It looked at the situation from many different angles, like it was working on a puzzle, and it tried to figure out the exact strategy that would get what I wanted. And yet, somehow I was blind to the selfishness in that until I tested what I wanted against the criteria in today’s workbook lesson. The test looked something like this:

I want to convince Ron to marry me. I remember there are only two alternatives, and in every choice I make I choose either ego or heaven. I accept that as true. I also accept there is no compromise, no ‘in-between’ option. This wanting is either ego or heaven, and I am here to discover which it is. If I convince Ron to marry me, will that marriage last forever? No. At best, “death do us part.” It could end in divorce before that. If I convince Ron to marry me, am I taking something from someone else? Cleary the answer is ‘yes.’ If he does not want to marry me, and I somehow convince him to marry me, I am taking his freedom to follow his own will from him. Is it possible that if I convince Ron to marry me, I will later feel guilty? Yes, I can see how that might occur. Therefore, my desire to convince Ron to marry me is ego and must be let go.

2. What if I do nothing? What if I simply let this unfold without grievance and let everything be? Will that last forever? Yes! I see how simply letting everything unfold and be as it is, is a non-ending state of being. If I make this choice, am I taking something from someone else? No, not at all ever. Will I feel guilty for this choice? No, it seems that I would only feel curious. And if I am completely genuine in letting everything unfold without putting my desires upon it, I would be happy.

And so, I made the second choice. That is how this lesson works in a practical way. Also, from looking at this and other choices this clearly, I could instantly see what was selfish and what was not. I learned to drop the selfishness, and live in a state of service, which is ‘letting it all unfold and be as it is’ while intuiting my little part in it, but never seeking for what ‘I can get out of it.’ Except for awakening, of course.

Manual for Teachers
“He who was always wholly spirit now no longer sees himself as a body, or even as in a body.”

I am becoming more adamant with myself as to what I am. I remind myself often that I am not this body, and that I am not even in this body temporarily. This body is an illusion that exists only in the mind. I have used words to refer to my self, words like spirit, pure consciousness, awareness, and the Course says that we are the Son of God and sometimes it says, we are Christ Consciousness or the Mind of Christ. None of these words evoke a sense of knowing in me, though they feel truer that the idea of a body.

What the Course is very clear about is that I am not a body, and for a long time, the body was the only idea that seemed real to me. I had thought of myself as a body for eons, evidently. But believing something for a long time does not make it true; it simply reinforces a false idea to the point that it becomes a hardened belief. And as Jesus says, what we believe is true for us.

Another thing Jesus tells us is that if we believe we are a body we will suffer when the body suffers. I am especially aware of this right now because this body is sick and so I feel sick, not because I must, but because I am still to some degree identified with the body. But as always now, I notice this phenomenon and realize it is a form of insanity, and as such, I deny it can be true. It is saner to deny what is not real than to simply accept it, and since it is not real, I can eventually learn to perceive it as not real. Then my experience will be of what is real and I will know myself as unlimited, as I truly am.

Text
I have always thought that God was asking me to sacrifice. This has been going on all my life. Sacrificing for God was strongly emphasized when I was a Catholic, not that I needed any encouragement to believe in sacrifice, but through Catholicism sacrifice became confused with love of God in my mind. In reality, sacrifice is related, not to love of God, but to the fear of God.

Slowly, through the study of ACIM, I have learned that God does not want my sacrifice. The idea of sacrifice is a sticky mess in my mind though, and I still notice the belief cropping up so it is still there, though not as strongly believed as before, and denied as truth when I notice it. If God wanted my sacrifice, He would not be Love.

The belief that is hardest to release is the belief the Holy Spirit is asking me to sacrifice the world and my own self in order to be saved. The confusion occurs because, while He does encourage me to give up the world and the ego self, He is also teaching me that this is no sacrifice, and up until now I just wasn’t buying it. There was still this corner of my mind where insanity reigns, and I think it is better to rule the asylum than to be one with God. Well, it is still there but it is a shrinking space.

In this part of the mind, the ego insists that with just a little more time the world can be improved upon and I will finally get what I want. No matter that it has been saying this for eons, and no matter that it can’t articulate exactly what it is I want or how that task will be accomplished. The ego mind is insistent that giving up on the separation idea is loss.

As a concept, I have already given up on the separation idea, and now I am just looking at the many forms of the idea in my mind and life and realizing that I don’t want it anymore. I am learning through contrast that it is no sacrifice to let it all go. I have been doing this a thought at a time, a situation at a time, a relationship at a time, but the lesson is being generalized and I am much closer to letting go of the idea that I am ever being asked to sacrifice. I am finally realizing that there is nothing here worth keeping so how could it be that letting it go would be a sacrifice.

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