Chapter 12: THE HOLY SPIRIT’S CURRICULUM
I. The Judgment of the Holy Spirit
1 You have been told not to make error real, and the way to do this is very simple. If you want to believe in error, you would have to make it real because it is not true. But truth is real in its own right, and to believe in truth you do not have to do anything. Understand that you do not respond to anything directly, but to your interpretation of it. Your interpretation thus becomes the justification for the response. That is why analyzing the motives of others is hazardous to you. If you decide that someone is really trying to attack you or desert you or enslave you, you will respond as if he had actually done so, having made his error real to you. To interpret error is to give it power, and having done this you will overlook truth.
Journal
This idea of not making the error real is very simple once I accept that I never respond to anything directly, but only to my interpretation of it. That is why I often ask the Holy Spirit to interpret for me, especially when I feel upset in some way. When I ask Holy Spirit for an interpretation, I am asking for the simple truth that was always there, right beneath the layer of ego interpretation.
When this becomes something I don’t understand it is because I don’t want it. I have seen some value in keeping the ego interpretation. Sometimes this desire to decide for myself what something means confuses the issue to the point that I really can’t see the problem, much less the answer. But again, the solution is the Holy Spirit, the truth that is still in my mind, even when it is clouded over with the dark thoughts of ego.
Here is an example. I was shopping and the clerk was very unhelpful. In fact she was rude. I had some thoughts about this. I thought that if I treated my customers like she was treating me, I wouldn’t have any. I thought that she should be doing some other job if she didn’t like hers. I wondered if it was me that she was responding to. I began to think about how I looked and how I was dressed, and I started to feel inadequate.
Why doesn’t she want to wait on me? I began to feel judged and attacked. All of this happened very quickly, and very quickly I was able to see that I was listening to the ego interpretation of this person and her behavior. I asked that my mind be healed of the desire to see myself attacked, and I asked the Holy Spirit what He saw in this situation.
The ego interpretation fell away and I could only smile on this sister of mine. I know how it feels to be confused about reality and so to suffer unhappiness, so I felt compassionate instead of defensive. I no longer saw myself as lacking and so I no longer saw her behavior as a personal attack on me. In fact I had to laugh at myself for ever taking it personally.
In fact, as I let my mind be healed, I saw her light, and even the compassion I had felt before began to fall away. My confusion isn’t my reality and for the moments that I knew this about myself, I knew it about her. There was nothing that needed my compassion. I would very much like to live this way all the time, but I notice that, without vigilance, I still fall back into the ego.
However, this must end and so I continue my practice and try to be patient with myself, realizing it is only the ego interpretation of my progress that causes me to feel impatient. When I feel discouraged that I am not always enlightened, I am making the error real. The ego interpretation of this thought leads me to feelings of hopelessness.
There must still be something in me that wants to be the seeker and not the finder. Instead of being upset about this, I can simply notice it and be glad I did. Now I can ask for help to see this differently. Without the ego interpretation, it is just a thought I had, an idea I believed in and something to be released. Without this hopeless belief, there is only peace and so there is nothing for me to do but bask in it.
As I look back on what happened, not with the clerk (that was an easy one) but with the feeling that I should be further along, that I should be awake by now, I became aware of how I got from despair to peace. I began by noticing the upset and I knew I didn’t want it. At first I asked and asked for my mind to be healed. I asked out of fear and desperation. I tried all sorts of spiritual ideas, mantras and prayers and positive thoughts.
I felt desperate because I couldn’t seem to do this. Then I began writing about it in this journal and Jesus talked to me through my writing. He had me see how impatient I was and how my impatience was driving me toward discouragement, and how it was making the error real. He showed me how I was trying to use the ego to undo the ego, and I saw that I needed to stop trying to make things happen and just let them happen. So I stopped trying to change anything and I just let it be.
I let the fear be. I let the discouragement be. I let the feelings of hopelessness be. My mind became quiet in that moment, and still, and I was in peace. Evidently, all I had to do was stop trying to do it myself and allow it to be done. Writing these final paragraphs I see that I have to keep returning to my writing on the problem because I can remember I had a problem, but I cannot remember what it felt like. That is the miracle of a healed mind, a problem, once healed is removed from the mind.
Thank you, Jesus, for your demonstration. This is a lesson I won’t soon forget.
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