Together, We Light the Way

Gentle Healing Lesson 125, Manual for Teachers, Text.  4-15-19

LESSON 125
In quiet I receive God’s Word today.

8 It is your voice to which you listen as He speaks to you. It is your Word He speaks. It is the Word of freedom and of peace, of unity of will and purpose, with no separation nor division in the single Mind of Father and of Son. In quiet listen to your Self today, and let Him tell you God has never left His Son, and you have never left your Self.

9 Only be quiet. You will need no rule but this, to let your practicing today lift you above the thinking of the world, and free your vision from the body’s eyes. Only be still and listen. You will hear the word in which the Will of God the Son joins in his Father’s Will, at one with it, with no illusions interposed between the wholly indivisible and true. As every hour passes by today, be still a moment and remind yourself you have a special purpose for this day; in quiet to receive the Word of God.

His Voice awaits your silence, for His Word can not be heard until your mind is quiet for a while, and meaningless desires have been stilled. Await His Word in quiet.

This is what I have been practicing this week, this being still, quieting my mind and listening for His Word. It needs me to be quiet and still, and somehow, I knew this must be true. Things are happening in me. Some long held beliefs have fallen away as if they were never there. I had not been asking for this, nor even thinking about it. I just noticed that I can’t find those beliefs anymore.

I did the meditation before I started writing and while I did notice thoughts and the mind’s desire to follow those thoughts, I was also aware of a strong desire to be here now with Self. Without any desire to direct the Self, I knew my mind was being purified and I still feel like part of me is still in meditation.

Regina’s Tips
Today’s lesson tells us that God/Spirit has not waited for our return to it to give its word to us. I think it is really important for us to realize that inner wisdom has always been there; we just haven’t always been listening. In fact, often we have purposefully chosen the opposite of inner wisdom.

To the degree that we are unhappy or suffering, that is to the degree that we choose the opposite of inner wisdom.

The fact above can be painful for some people to look at with absolute honesty. Some of you who are reading this today will avoid accepting that statement as true, even though it would be really helpful if you did accept it as true. That is okay. As today’s lesson says, you are not “led by force, but only love. … not judged, but only sanctified.” However, you will find happiness sooner if you can accept the statement above.

Many people think it is hard to hear the voice of wisdom. I don’t think that is true. I think we simply need to begin to listen to it instead of wanting to do things our own way. When today’s lesson asks us to be still, quiet, silent, so the voice can speak, it really means we need to put our mind’s will aside and be willing to follow that intuitive voice like Katie does. The more we do that, the clearer the voice becomes.

My Thoughts
I love the idea of surrender. To the degree that I have surrendered, I have become more peaceful and happier and I feel so much closer to my Self and to my Creator. Even though I understand surrender have discovered the benefits of surrender, I still cling stubbornly to some degree of independence from my Self and from God.

That’s crazy, isn’t it? I don’t understand it either. I seldom do it deliberately, but I know I do it because I am not supremely happy at all times and choosing to listen to the ego mind is the only reason I would not be happy. This daily meditation in which I sit in stillness and quiet the mind as much as I can is deepening my desire for surrender. It is healing my mind and my only part seems to be that I am receptive to that healing.

Manual for Teachers
10. HOW IS JUDGMENT RELINQUISHED? P 3
3 The aim of our curriculum, unlike the goal of the world’s learning, is the recognition that judgment in the usual sense is impossible. This is not an opinion but a fact. In order to judge anything rightly, one would have to be fully aware of an inconceivably wide range of things; past, present and to come. One would have to recognize in advance all the effects of his judgments on everyone and everything involved in them in any way. And one would have to be certain there is no distortion in his perception, so that his judgment would be wholly fair to everyone on whom it rests now and in the future. Who is in a position to do this? Who except in grandiose fantasies would claim this for himself?

Journal
This is the paragraph that made all the difference in my life. When I read this paragraph, I understood that I have no business judging anything, not that I shouldn’t but that I can’t. I didn’t stop judging immediately, but I did start noticing when I was judging; I became willing not to judge. It felt strange to me at first, and I felt the ego’s objections very strongly. After all, how could I navigate the world without judging? Just crossing the street required a judgment of timing for safety’s sake.

So what I did was to take it in steps. My first step was to look at the judgments that seemed most obvious and with the most potential for harm. I asked the Holy Spirit to guide me in this, to point me to the ones He wanted me to look at, and then to correct my thinking about them. I began to notice when I was angry with someone, or resentful toward them, and realized I must have judged him. I would bring this judgment to the Holy Spirit and let Him reinterpret it for me.

I began to do this when I was unhappy about a situation. I would realize that I must have judged it, and so I would ask the Holy Spirit to take that judgment from my mind and to give me a correct judgment. Really, the only reason I decided it was bad was that I asked the ego what it meant. Do I really want the ego mind making decisions for me? So it wasn’t that hard to change my mind. The Holy Spirit knows everything and so can make a decision for me that will help and not harm.

This all sounds so simple and straight forward as I write about it, but while I was developing this new way of making decisions it was pretty messy. I would vacillate between judging with the ego and accepting the Holy Spirit’s judgment. I would balk at times, insisting I knew the right judgment. I would sometimes feel resentful to have lost this “right” to judge. But I trust Jesus and so I kept at it and the excellent results of giving judgment to the Holy Spirit convinced me this was the way to go.

At some point, I began to open more completely to the Holy Spirit, asking for guidance in all things. I began the process of learning to fully surrender to the One Who Knows. I went through the same messy process as I made this shift as well, but it wasn’t as hard because the Holy Spirit had already proved Itself to me. I had tasted the freedom of giving up a job that I was unprepared to do and letting it be done for me. Now, I was just extending that surrender and gaining more freedom.

I am still mastering this decision. I make mistakes and sometimes get pulled back into the old way of fumbling through the world without a clue. But there has been another shift for me even if it is not completely accepted yet. It is harder for me to explain. My trust is so much greater now that I have surrendered on a deeper level. I trust the Holy Spirit to decide for me most things, and I no longer think about each judgment.

In fact, the only time I notice judgment is when I have tried to do it on my own again. I change my mind as quickly as I can because I don’t want to go back to that insane way of living. I want to move forward, surrendering more and more of the ego until I am no longer struggling to live, but am being lived. That is not my experience yet, but it is closer to it than ever before.

The ego hates this idea of not being in charge of my life and recognizes its eventual demise if this keeps up and so it throws up objections and blocks, but this is a done deal. Now it is all just details. I practice surrender of that part of the mind and I experience living from my holy mind, and the ego begins to recede into background noise. Then something gets triggered and it’s loud and obnoxious again until I bring it to the Holy Spirit. Eventually, though, this will end. There is no doubt in my mind that the ego is on its way out because that is my truest desire.

Text

“You do not recognize the enormous waste of energy you expend in denying truth.” 9.1.11

I almost never get angry with anyone these days but I was reading my journal from a couple of years ago when I saw this entry. It seems I was angry with someone and I had spent two days arguing for my anger, insisting that he be wrong and that his actions were hurting me. In my mind I was insisting that the only way I could be happy is if he sacrificed his perceived needs on my behalf. It took nearly two days for me to get past this idea, to move my hands from in front of my eyes so that I could see. What a waste of energy that was.

How could my happiness depend on what another person does or does not do? How could my happiness depend on getting my way at the expense of another? How could my happiness depend on what happens in a dream? Would God put my happiness out of my reach? Would he make happiness something elusive, something that is only sometimes possible?

Here is what I discovered when I finally remembered that I wanted to see. I decided that all of my previous goals that involved a need to have something happen were unimportant compared with the goal of knowing God. I let it all go to the Holy Spirit for purification. I let Him heal my mind. I stopped interfering with love and accepted it. Happiness happened.

The situation itself remains unresolved for a while longer and the ego mind wanted to revive the issue bringing love into question at times, but I was not interested. I was aware of those thoughts and when one snagged my attention I asked that the Holy Spirit to remove it from my mind. There is a song I listen to every night as I go to sleep.

It repeats over and over the words, “thank you,” and, “your love is pouring down.” As the song repeats these words, I imagine that His love is pouring down on me, washing away the doubts and uncertainties that may have plagued me during the day, healing all that is not truth in my mind. I am filled with gratitude.

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