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Gentle Healing Lesson 161, Manual for Teachers, Text.  9-9-19

LESSON 161
Give me your blessing, holy Son of God.

“Complete abstraction is the natural condition of the mind. But part of it is now unnatural. It does not look on everything as one.”

Do you ever wonder what you would perceive if your mind was closer to its natural state? Well, here it is. You would see that everything is one. I don’t see this yet, but as my mind has healed, I am closer to seeing this way. I feel the oneness far more than I used to. I am aware of a sense of separation, but then I feel a shift. I feel love and then a realization that this one is not separate from me. It wavers and it can be affected by my ego thoughts, but once realized, it can never be entirely lost.

“The purpose of all seeing is to show you what you wish to see. All hearing but brings to your mind the sounds it wants to hear.”

This sentence is key to understanding and to changing my mind. Whatever I see, however I see it, it is showing me what I want. From there, I can decide if my desire fulfilled is bringing me peace and happiness. If not, then I can make a different choice.

If I have trouble letting go of the belief that is being manifest as this experience, I can ask for another way of seeing and my Inner Guide will help. To see differently, I must desire a different interpretation, be willing to be wrong about the present interpretation, be open and receptive to something I do not currently believe. Doing this frequently has taught me to trust a guide not of my little self which has led me astray too often.

Reality is whole but in order to have this experience, we made specifics and so that is what we must use in our practicing. This is why it is important to start with the situation, the person, the thought when we ask for a different way to see. What happens is that we learn something often enough and the mind begins to grasp that this learning applies to everything.

My experience was that I forgave (undid) many thoughts and then I saw that those thoughts came from a limited number of beliefs, so I began to forgive the beliefs. Now, something else is happening. I am beginning to accept that all those beliefs are the same belief, that is not my Self, and so this is what I am forgiving. I am not my beliefs, I am the Self that I was created.

“One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth.”

I find it helpful to think of the Sonship as holographic, which is just a way to visualize what Jesus tells us in this sentence. It’s funny to me now that for years I have read this expressed in many ways all through the Course and really didn’t get the full implications. As Jesus says, “not understood nor understandable.” It’s funny to me now because once understood it seems so clear. How could I have been confused before? I didn’t get smarter, my IQ higher, I simply became willing to know this.

I still pretend we are separate somehow and not whole, and this is most apparent when I get caught in the story of victimhood and feeling unfairly treated. Seeing separation is the only way to support these feelings. I love that I can snap out of it now, and am delighted that it is easier to do so, and that I want to do so more quickly than before. This is what practice of the Course accomplishes. Eventually, it will lead me to awakening completely.

“It seems to be the body that we feel limits our freedom, makes us suffer, and at last puts out our life. Yet bodies are but symbols for a concrete form of fear.”

Oh, yes! I went through a protracted period of projecting my guilt onto the body. The body was my symbol of all that was wrong. This led to feeling guilty for having chosen to experience the body as myself. After a while, I realized what I was doing. The body is a neutral event. It is the effect of a decision. It is not anything of itself so how could simply experiencing a body be the cause of anything. Now, I no longer feel guilty about having a body, but I still project guilt onto the body in a variety of ways. Now that I understand what I am doing, I can stop.

Jesus tells us that if we think we are the body we will experience everything the body does. So if I identify with the body as myself, when the body experiences pain, so will I. When the body attacks or is attacked, I will feel that attack as personal and will suffer the effects of believing I am a victim or a victimizer. Because the body is a separation device, if I believe I am the body, then I will believe that I am separate. Bodies die and so if I am a body, I will believe that I die.

“Hate is specific. There must be a thing to be attacked.”

The body is that specific thing that can be hated and feared and attacked in defense of another body. When I see my brother as a body, I see him as fear’s symbol. This sets up the awful cycle of guilt/fear/attack/defend. And around and around it goes. The way out is to realize the body is as meaningless as any of our thoughts. We give it all the meaning it has for us. We could stop using it as a symbol of fear and as proof of guilt. We could give it to the Holy Spirit for His use instead.

“This do the body’s eyes behold in one whom Heaven cherishes, the angels love and God created perfect. This is his reality. And in Christ’s vision is his loveliness reflected in a form so holy and so beautiful that you could scarce refrain from kneeling at his feet. Yet you will take his hand instead, for you are like him in the sight that sees him thus. Attack on him is enemy to you, for you will not perceive that in his hands is your salvation. Ask him but for this, and he will give it to you. Ask him not to symbolize your fear. Would you request that love destroy itself? Or would you have it revealed to you and set you free?”

How do I do this? How do I see past my brother’s body? The most certain and permanent solution is to remember my Self as who I am and then I will remember who my brother is. Jesus admonishes us to not let our sight be arrested at the body. In other words, don’t look at his body, his personality, his behavior and think that is who he is. That is just a mask, a separation experience and has nothing to do with his reality. Insist on knowing this one as the Holy Spirit knows him. This is what today’s practice involves. It gives us a very specific way to practice this.

Regina’s Tips

This is another tip that I recommend you read in its entirety. But here is the part I am using because it is such a clear example of how to do this lesson and get the most out of it.

So today we will focus on anger.

Depending on your personality, you may experience anger in one way or another. Some people allow themselves to experience outright fury and hatred. Others repress that, so that anger might be experienced as mere annoyance. The first practice of the day will help you tune into your anger, regardless of how you experience it. You are asked to “Select one brother.” Let that one be one that you feel some grievance with, and this will give you a chance to look at your anger.

The lesson asks you to “See his face, his hands and feet, his clothing.” Etcetera. I ask you to go a little further. Look at what angers you about him/her. Let your mind temporarily dwell on those characteristics, but as you do, keep one eye turned inward so that it is looking at your thoughts and noticing they are your thoughts. Let me demonstrate:

I am thinking of Cassie. She is big in size. Tall and over-weight. She smiles all of the time, like she’s happy to be better than everyone else, happy to know more than others know. She talks all of the time as if she’s right about everything. She never listens. Whenever I try to speak, she cuts me off after half a sentence. She thinks she knows what I was going to say, and then she goes on to tell me how I’m wrong. She doesn’t ever listen to me. She’s wrong about everything because she never listens to anyone else. She only knows her point of view, which is extremely narrow-minded. I really don’t like being around her at all.

Okay, now looking back at what I wrote: I see that I focused on her as a body, “tall and over-weight.” From there, I went directly into her smile, and I interpreted its meaning. I decided she smiles because she thinks she is better than everyone else. I see that I believe this. I see that I think I know what she is thinking. I see that I believe I am right. I see that when I look at her in this way, I think I am better than her. I notice that I feel annoyed by how much she talks. That is my anger. I’m also angry that she never listens to me. I must be afraid of something there. What am I afraid of?

Why am I angry at Cassie? Because she talks all of the time as if she is right about everything, and she never listens to me even when I know more than she does.

Why does that bother me? Because I think she should listen to me.

Why does it anger me (scare me) that she doesn’t listen to me? I’m afraid that I am not as valuable or as important as I would like to appear. Maybe I am meaningless, not needed.

Through the process of looking at anger with one person, we can uncover fear thinking that we are identified with. For example, “I’m afraid that I am not as valuable or as important as I would like to appear. Maybe I am meaningless, not needed.”

The lesson asks us to say to this one, “Give me your blessing, holy Son of God. I would behold you with the eyes of Christ, and see my perfect sinlessness in you.”

I ask you to go a little further. Ask yourself, “What is really upsetting me? Is it him/her or is it the thinking that I have just uncovered in my own mind?”

I recommend journaling to look at your thoughts in the way I just demonstrated. I think it is easier to see thoughts clearly when they are written down.

Manual for Teachers
Judgment by Me Is Impossible. When I make the world real, I am battling with God’s Idea of Who I AM and where I am.

Every time I attempt to judge, I am at war with God. The Creator created me and when I judge what and who I am, I am, in essence, creating myself. I am saying that I am no longer as God created me, but have made of myself something I prefer. It is pure insanity. I can only be as God created me.

So, if I identify with the body and the body is sick, this is my way of saying I am something that can be sick. I am something that can die. This cannot be true because God does not create unlike Itself and God does not have a body that can be sick and God is not insane and therefore could not choose sickness, and God is eternal and cannot know death.

I cannot have something that God does not have. This is why Jesus tells us in the Course that sickness is a defense against the truth. My feeble attempts to prove I am a creature of my own design by making the body sick is one of the ways I battle God for supremacy. Or I might use the sick body as a way of punishing myself before God can do it to me. I judge myself guilty and then I take God’s prerogative as my own and punish myself. I think I am my own savior.

If I judge someone else, I am again at war with God, in the same way, I did when I judged myself. If I judge what I should do and where and when I again am at war with God. I have a choice, I can decide for myself with the ego-mind, or I can decide with the Holy Spirit. The first pits me against the Truth, the latter aligns my mind with Truth.

Text
T-8.7:16

There are two sentences in paragraph 16 that feel really meaningful to me this morning. “One is that freedom from illusions lies only in not believing them.” I love this for its simplicity. Yes, it can feel difficult not to believe in what seems so real, but then that is the purpose of the illusion, to feel real. So, when I experience the effects of believing in the illusion, I pay attention to what I had been thinking, and then I ask the Holy Spirit to remove those thoughts from my mind.

Here is an example. I felt harassed one day. There seemed to be too much work for one day and I felt overwhelmed. These are illusions. They affected me because I believed them. I could easily have questioned them, but I didn’t. Normally, when I feel like I have too much to do, I ask that Holy Spirit decide for me what to do and what to let go. I remind myself that it is just a thought in my mind that I have more to do than I can do. For some reason, that day I didn’t question my thoughts and so I suffered until I changed my mind about that.

“The second sentence that stands out to me says, “Do not arrest your thought in this world, and you will open your mind to creation in God.”

When I accepted the idea that I was harassed and overwhelmed and did not question that thought, it was because I had arrested my thought in this world. I looked at the world (my busy day) and decided the work I had to do was my problem. When I finally realized what I was doing, and I asked for correction, the barriers that seemed to hold me hostage to my suffering fell away. I was in immediate peace and I was given ideas that corrected some of the errors I made while confused.

What I have discovered is that I can always choose to not believe the illusion. It used to feel hard and I had to talk myself into letting go. Sometimes I would have to ask for help over and over, not because I had to talk the Holy Spirit into helping me, but because I had to talk myself into accepting the help. Having practiced this for a long time, now it is easy for me to do it.

I can, with the help of the Holy Spirit, free my mind from the belief in illusions and the process is very simple. I notice I am not happy and I ask that my mind be healed, then I allow the aberrant thought to be removed from my mind. I remind myself that I am not this body or this story. I am spirit. I am the Thought of God, created by Him, like Him. This silly moment cannot be reality. Then I allow my mind to fly free of this world.

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