I stay busy doing my spiritual work just as do you. It is the way I remain faithful to my purpose and the way I achieve my purpose. Sometimes the form of the work varies. The most important work I have ever done has been the lessons from the workbook for A Course in Miracles. This is a mind changing, life altering experience. It has been enhanced since by using the Illumination Journal by Revs Paul and Deb Phelps. Journaling with the Holy Spirit through these lessons has enriched my experience in ways I cannot explain.
I love using the courses from Pathways of Light to inspire and guide me as I do this work. I have found Dan Joseph’s three step process to be invaluable in my work. Everything I do is based on his steps of honestly acknowledging my dark thoughts and feelings, then offering that darkness to God and become willing to release it. And finally, having cleared a space, I now open to a new inner experience of comfort and love. Steady and consistent use of this process has helped me to see things differently.
I have found some of Regina Dawn Aker’s practices to be especially helpful to me. She has taught me to notice that while I have many thoughts, I do not have to believe them. She has also taught me not to be attached to the “I” thought, to be fully surrendered so that the truth of God can be made manifest through me. I practice this by noticing those ideas that I seem to attach to and remembering that I am not that.
Lately I have been using Byron Katie’s, The Work which is helping me to break the cycle of believing my thoughts by questioning them. She calls this inquiry and she makes it very simple through her process. Katie asks that I consider my beliefs honestly and without sugar coating them. She asks that I let the ego run wild and express itself fully. Then she suggests that I question if that is true. Is it really true?
Using her process I then ask myself how I react when I believe that thought, and then I follow that question with one which wants to know who I would be without that thought. Once I have answered these questions, I turn it around, and the see the opposite as true. I then give myself three genuine specific examples of how it is as true, or truer, than my original statement.
All of these processes and many more have helped me so much. This is my life. This is what I do, and have been doing for a very long time. It takes motivation to stick to this kind of effort. It is easy to read about it and think you understand, but that does not change you. It is only the practice of it that creates change. It is easy to practice it for awhile, but it has been my experience that choosing God over ego requires constant vigilance. It is a moment to moment endeavor. What is my motivation?
When I first began this spiritual path, or should I say when I first realized I was on a spiritual path, my motivation was to create a better life. I didn’t like my stories and I wanted new ones. I was unhappy and wanted to change my world so I would be happy. I wanted what is to look like something else thinking that would make me happy. God said, “Ok, let’s start there.” He loves me so much. Wherever I am, there He is.
Then I began to realize that there was a lot more to this than fixing my life. As the Course says in many places, “I am the means God as appointed for the salvation of the world.” How is that for motivation? The salvation of the world depends on me. How could that be?
The ego mind finds that thought to be a fearful thought. It says that probably it was the same thought Jesus had right before they crucified him. It seems to suggest sacrifice and the ego can get really whiny about this. “I have little enough, and now I’m supposed to give it up? I can’t save myself, how am I supposed to save myself?” And of course, the ever favorite, “Why me?”
Jesus knew this would be the ego reaction and he answered it before we even got around to asking. He assures us that crucifixion was his method of teaching and need never be repeated. He tells us over and over in the Course that God does not want our sacrifice. One objection, at least, is true. I cannot save myself. But I am not alone. I am surrounded by enlightened help.
In Lesson 153, Jesus tells us, “We rise up strong in Christ and let our weakness disappear, as we remember that His strength abides in us. We will remind ourselves that He remains beside us through the day, and never leaves our weakness unsupported by His strength.” He also says, “Be not afraid nor timid. There can be no doubt that you will reach your final goal.” Thank you, God. Thank you, God!
I was trying to remove the flooring in my room and realized I could not do this alone. I stood looking at it wondering how the job was going to get done. Then once the flooring was up, I still had to figure out how water collected under it. It seems impossible as I follow the water line and realize it does not go into my bedroom and yet, there is water pooling under the flooring. And I still didn’t know how to get the flooring up.
I began to feel helpless and victimized, when I remembered the Work. I looked at that thought, “I am helpless and victimized by this circumstance.” Is that true? Well it seems to be true. Can I absolutely know it is true? Well, no, not absolutely. It might not be true.
How do I react when I believe that thought? I feel afraid. I feel like crying. I feel embarrassed. I feel anxious.
Who would I be without the thought that I was a helpless victim? I would be a person with a problem to be solved. I would be free to solve the problem with a sense of anticipation as I watched the solution come into my mind.
I turn the thought around. I am not a victim. I am not helpless. I am not a helpless victim because there are solutions to my problem and if I can’t find those solutions I can ask for help. There, that is two examples right there. I am not a helpless victim because I have solved many problems.
That was how I did The Work on this particular problem. I stopped the cycle of ego thinking, and ego story telling by questioning the legitimacy of that thought. If I had not done this I would soon have had many ego stories to support my belief in victimhood and helplessness. It would only take me a moment to come up with half a dozen of them.
Instead I used my practice to bypass the ego and to reinforce the truth that I don’t have to believe my thoughts. I still have to get the flooring up, but now I can do it in joy. I look forward to seeing how I solve this problem rather than dreading the anxiety and fear it could have generated had I chosen to believe the lie that I am a helpless victim.
So how does this tie in with my job of saving the world? How could this possibly have anything to do with the salvation of the world? Nothing I experience in this world is real or means anything, not the floor or the leak or the solution. But as I remember my purpose, which is to save the world, I can use this event to heal my mind. As my mind is healed, the Sonship is healed, because my mind is part of the whole Mind of the Sonship.
Let me take this even further. Lesson 115 says, “I am essential to the plan for the salvation of the world.” It does not say I have a little part or even a big part. It says I am essential. I looked up the word essential. It means, of the utmost importance, basic, indispensible, and necessary. That’s me. I am essential to the plan for the salvation of the world. That’s you. You are essential to the plan for the salvation of the world!
Not obsessing over my floor and not feeling victimized and helpless kept me from having a bad day. I was happy all day long with my destroyed floor and no plan of action. That is a miracle all by itself, but it is nothing compared to the real miracle. Because I chose not to believe that thought I saved the world. The world may not look any different to you, but it was essential that I chose not to believe that ego lie.
If I held onto that thought and believed it the world would still be held hostage by the ego belief in separation. It was essential that I let it be healed. It was essential that I forgive the idea of victimization and helplessness because these things are not part of the Son of God. If I hold onto a lie, I cannot hold onto the truth. If I do not hold the truth in the mind of the Son, it is not held. It is in this that my part is essential, as is yours.
This is what I am finally learning about this spiritual work. It is not about making a better life. It is not about me at all. It is not personal. It is about the healing of the Sonship. These are not my thoughts, this is not my body, this is not my life. I don’t need to wake up. I don’t exist. My identity as I experience it in the world is tied to an illusion. It is an illusion.
But I do exist outside that illusion and I want to wake up to that Self which is real. And so I use the ego body and the ego stories and the ego thoughts to awaken the sleeping mind of the Son. This awakening has nothing to do with Myron but that’s ok; I don’t have anything to do with Myron either, other than to use her story as a symbol for the separation belief, and to use her story as a tool to awaken from that belief.
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