Day 100
7. HOW DO GOD’S TEACHERS DEAL WITH MAGIC THOUGHTS?
1 This is a crucial question both for teacher and pupil. If this issue is mishandled, the teacher of God has hurt himself and has also attacked his pupil. This strengthens fear, and makes the magic seem quite real to both of them. How to deal with magic thus becomes a major lesson for the teacher of God to master. His first responsibility in this is not to attack it. If a magic thought arouses anger in any form, God’s teacher can be sure that he is strengthening his own belief in sin and has condemned himself. He can be sure as well that he has asked for depression, pain, fear and disaster to come to him. Let him remember, then, it is not this that he would teach, because it is not this that he would learn.
Its obviously very important that we learn to deal with magic thoughts, for our own sakes as well as those we teach. We always get what we give, and so if we teach magic we learn magic. It is these magic thoughts that keep the illusion in place and prevent us from awakening from this illusion.
I know I still do this. I still have many magic thoughts, and sometimes its hard to see them. I know that I am listening to ego when I am upset in any way, but I am pretty clever at hiding my beliefs from myself. I was trying to think of an example this morning because examples from my life help me to see more clearly.
I over slept this morning and so was running behind on my time. Also I had an early appointment so I was anxious about how I could do my study, get ready for the day and pack my car for the week out of town. I am unwilling to skip any of those things that needed to be done. My customer had told me that he would call if he needed to cancel, so I thought that might happen, was hoping it would happen.
I don’t like feeling anxious and now that I know it is not necessary and that anxiety is a choice and therefore avoidable, I stopped and thought about today’s reading.
I asked Holy Spirit to help me because my mind was still wrapped in a fog of ego confusion. I was looking at appearances and believing them so it was hard to see the magic in the thinking. When I asked for clarity, I saw that I believed several thoughts that are in that category.
When I saw that I had over slept I thought about how groggy I felt even though I had enough sleep, and immediately the ego mind went to work finding excuses and reasons including my age, and my extra busy weekend. I thought about articles I have read about sleep deprivation and how long it takes to catch up. The ego always directs my attention outwardly. This is magic thinking.
If someone had spoken to me this morning I might have expressed the ego beliefs, much as I sometimes do when people start talking about their illnesses. I might tell them what I know about that illness, share something I read, suggest possible treatments. This response is so hard for me stop.
While at the hospital this weekend I did exactly this, and even as I did it I knew it was not good. When I asked the Holy Spirit what I could say instead, the thought I had was to listen in the moment for His words, and if I could not do that then just listen to the person speaking rather than adding to the error.
Looking for a story to explain my unhappiness is magic thinking because the story is the result, not the cause. I will never find the cause in the story; therefore I will never fix the cause. The cause is in my mind, my thoughts and beliefs
Sharing in someone’s delusion about anything is magic thinking and only adds to the illusion, increasing their fear and their belief in what is not true. In both these cases I am teaching a lie and therefore learning the lie, so I am doing double harm. Holy Spirit, I understand that when I am not extending love, I am attacking. Please help me as I watch my mind for this kind of thinking. First, I would do no harm.
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