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Gentle Healing Lesson 152, Manual for Teachers, Text.  6-28-19

LESSON 152
The power of decision is my own.

“Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is.”

This is one of my favorite lessons, one I refer to frequently because it is the answer to why I am having any particular experience. Jesus is completely uncompromising in his words in this lesson. If something is in my life, it is there because I made a decision for it. Nothing is exempt from this. And if there is something missing, it is because I chose to omit it. The responsibility for my life lies in my decisions, the choices I make.

When I first started using this lesson, I turned it on myself. I saw my error and I felt guilty for it. I learned to think of this differently, though, and to realize that I am 100% responsible but 0% guilty. This freed me up to make good use of this lesson. Understanding that I am responsible for everything in my life means that if I don’t like my life, all I have to do is change my mind about what I have decided. I can always choose differently. What is not to like about this lesson!

“Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true, and nothing else is true.”

It is essential that we accept the second part of this sentence if the first part is to be true. This is where we tend to go astray in our thinking. In order for this to be true we must accept that we are exactly as God created us. Nothing has changed about that. What I am is a Thought in the Mind of God. I am not subject to sickness, to suffering, to death. If any of these things occur and they do occur in the illusion, I have chosen to experience them. They could not happen otherwise because God did not create them therefore, they cannot be part of anything He did create.

Even if we believe this there is a tendency to deny responsibility for certain things that occur in life. The ego response is to look outward for a cause and to project blame for the event on what we find there. I have had situations in my life that I could swear were caused by others. There was a time when I was betrayed by someone close to me and I could not, for the life of me, see how that was my doing. And yet, when I chose to forgive the whole situation, I began to see it differently, and what I saw was not betrayal at all. Even if someone wanted to betray me and believed they had done so, I cannot be betrayed if I don’t believe in betrayal.

“You but accuse Him of insanity, to think He made a world where such things seem to have reality.”

We made this world for the very purpose of experiencing duality. We wanted to have opposites so that is what we have. In this world we made there is good and bad, happiness and sadness, sickness and health, etc. But in God there is only God and God is Love, God is Life. This is how we know that God could not have created the world. There are no opposites in God. If my experience is not one of love, joy, health, life, and other attributes of God, then I know that I must have made it. God creates through extension of Himself. He does not create what does not exist within Himself. He is not insane. We are.

I’m looking forward to delving into this Lesson further tomorrow.

Regina’s Tips
Here are few examples of the types of decisions you may see yourself make as you watch for the decisions that shape your experience.
I don’t want to do this.
I hate … (traffic, this heat, mean people, stupid people, myself, etc.)
I will never be able to …
I don’t have enough …
I’m tired of this.
He/she is … (annoying, wrong, stupid, lazy, etc.)
I’m so … (stupid, lazy, ugly, etc.)
I have too much to do.
They think … about me.
This situation is unacceptable.
I’ll be happy when I get …
I’ll be safe when I get …
I won’t ever … (understand this, be able to do this, get to go there, etc.)
No one ever pays attention to me.
This always happens to me.
This is too good; something bad is going to happen next.
This isn’t fair.

As you watch for the decisions you make, notice both the decisions and how those decisions affect your experience. Ask yourself, “If I made a different decision about this, how would my experience be different?” Look both at the circumstance and your emotional experience to see if you can find at least one way your experience would be different if you made a different decision.

My Thoughts
As I read that list of decisions that people commonly make and that affect their experience, I saw some that sometimes apply to me. On the other hand, I saw many that used to apply to me but that I have stopped doing because I didn’t like the effects. This is why my life is so much happier than it used to be. I’ve learned to make better decisions. I continue to watch my mind for those decisions that have not yet been changed.

Gentle Healing Lesson 152 Day 2
“The power of decision is my own. This day I will accept myself as what my Father’s Will created me to be.”

“Then will we wait in silence, giving up all self-deceptions, as we humbly ask our Self that He reveal Himself to us.”

Does it sound arrogant to think of yourself as the Son of God? Arrogance is of the ego that thinks it is its own creator, that it can usurp God and distort what He made. Humility is laying all we made aside and accepting our true nature, accepting our self as God created us. This means that we must lay aside all self concepts. Those self concepts are every little thing we think of our selves after we say I am. The only descriptive words that apply to us are those that apply to God.

In the past when I got to this part I would feel uneasy. I was afraid to ask, afraid that it wouldn’t happen and what that might mean about me and about the truth. Then later, I was afraid because I didn’t expect it to happen, the past proved it wouldn’t happen and I felt guilty for my lack of faith. Now, I just wonder if today I will know my Self. Maybe I will. I prepare my mind to accept this as I release what I think I know and what I think I need and as I apply the power of decision toward this goal. Then I wait and let Him do what must be done, the part that is not mine. I trust my Self to know the right time.

Manual for Teachers
Why it is healing should never be repeated.
When we heal a patient, the only reason we would repeat it is if we looked at the patient and decided that the outward appearance indicates a failure to heal. This is lack of trust and lack of trust is an attack. I bet that everyone has had this experience at one time or another. I know that when my friend was drinking, I asked for healing for him and it seemed like nothing was happening except more drinking, more trips to the emergency room, more near-death experiences.

I lacked trust because I believed what my eyes showed me. I forgot that the eyes show us only the illusion. Eventually, I was able to disregard what I saw with my eyes and to trust that Love heals. It took me a while because I let fear distract me from the truth and so I had to accept healing for myself first, then I could offer healing. This is just an error and not a sin. An error can be corrected and it was. That is why Jesus tells us that our function is to accept the Atonement for ourselves. We can’t give what we don’t have.

Text
Thinking about reality and limits
I have been thinking a lot about the world not being real. I have been paying attention to how it shifts according to my beliefs and my thoughts. Sometimes it is quite remarkable to see this. I have even experimented with controlling bodily things that should be out of my control. Because, after all, if the body is just a projection of an idea, then I should be able to change it at will.

So what are the arbitrary limits I am placing on myself? I think that some pain and some injuries are not real and I watch them disappear. But some pain and some injuries seem real to me, too real for me to control. This doesn’t make sense, but there you are. I believe that I will always have the money and the things I need even though I can’t tell you where it will come from. But I put a limit on that. For instance, I would like to go to Hawaii, but I don’t seriously plan it because my imagination doesn’t stretch my budget that far. However, it is not a strict limit. I can imagine that somehow it could happen. Who knows?

I want to wake up and I think I can accept that, but so far, no go. Maybe I have a limit there. Maybe I can be close and almost there, but not all the way. I don’t know. I also believe it could happen. Maybe it has and I just forgot to notice. LOL.

I want never again to experience guilt, but when I look in my mind, I see that I must be limiting that as well, but it is easier to let it go when I do find it and it doesn’t show up as much as it used to. I think it is a good idea to check in with myself and see where I have placed limits. Does it matter that this character, Myron, has limits? Not really, but her life is a good classroom in which to work at removing the limits I have arbitrarily chosen to believe in.

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