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Study of Text, C 15: The Two Uses of Time, P 7, 9-13-17

I. The Two Uses of Time, P 7
7 The Holy Spirit teaches thus: There is no hell. Hell is only what the ego has made of the present. The belief in hell is what prevents you from understanding the present, because you are afraid of it. The Holy Spirit leads as steadily to Heaven as the ego drives to hell. For the Holy Spirit, Who knows only the present, uses it to undo the fear by which the ego would make the present useless. There is no escape from fear in the ego’s use of time. For time, according to its teaching, is nothing but a teaching device for compounding guilt until it becomes all-encompassing, demanding vengeance forever.

Journal
There is no hell other than what the ego makes of the present. The ego uses the present to increase the belief in guilt and fear. There is a way out of this. As we begin to turn to the Holy Spirit for the truth, we learn to face guilt and fear and to recognize that neither one is real. Through consistent practice, this has happened for me.

When I feel anything except peace and happiness, I realize that I am letting the ego use time to compound guilt. I then cancel out what I have just learned from the ego and I ask the Holy Spirit for the truth. It is a simple process and it works to the degree that I am willing to accept the Holy Spirit’s interpretation over the ego’s interpretation.

Here is an example of how I used this process yesterday. I had an ice cream cone with my granddaughter yesterday and this morning I noticed a feeling of uneasiness about it. I knew that uneasiness was the ego encouraging me to feel guilty for eating ice cream.

I recognized the problem immediately because it is one that has been around for a long time. I have been at war with food for my entire adult life. I have been very conflicted in this area. I have a story that if I eat sugar I will get fat. I want the sugary food but I don’t want to get fat so it is an unending battle.

To make it worse, I eat the desert anyway and then feel guilty because I think I shouldn’t. This makes me feel like a failure because I am weak. And now I feel vulnerable because I seem to have no control and this scares me. So now the ego has this unholy trinity going, sin, guilt, and fear. I sinned because I made up a rule and didn’t follow it and now I am guilty of the sin, and I am afraid because I know that punishment is sure to follow and that punishment will be weight gain. My own private hell.

But now I don’t just accept this anymore. I noticed the feelings associated with this thinking, and I changed my mind. What happened is that I quickly realized I was not at peace and this means that I asked the ego what eating the ice cream means. As soon as I accepted the meaning the ego gave it, I would normally ask what the solution should be. The ego would then start telling me things I could do to prevent or undo the expected punishment of weight gain. Go to the gym, maybe, to work it off. Which would only cause more guilt because that wasn’t going to happen.

But now I seldom get to that place. I have been practicing the Rules for Decision for a while and it is automatic thinking for me to see the error and go immediately to the real solution. So I chose not to pay attention to the ego, and instead, I asked the Holy Spirit what the ice cream situation meant. Then I could ask a real question and get a real answer.

Generally, this is enough for me to undo the whole thing, but this time when I told the Holy Spirit I didn’t want those beliefs in my mind anymore, and that He could take them for me, I didn’t feel complete relief. So I asked Him what else I needed to know. The thought that came to me is that in the past, I have always failed to let go of the belief that ice cream was a sin, and I kept repeating the same behavior with the same results.

Ah! I realized that the ego was using this present time to keep me in guilt by telling me this is the one thing I cannot give to Holy Spirit and that my choice to give it up could not work. I decided not to believe the ego and so I asked Holy Spirit for an interpretation and a solution and the thought that came into my mind is that, of course, I can change my mind. Of course, I will give this to the Holy Spirit. There. That’s done!

The whole issue is a construct of ego beliefs that I never questioned. The ego said that I should lose weight for all sorts of reasons, all made up in the ego mind. The ego said that ice cream and carbs, in general, were the problem and that I must not eat them. The ego said that I was guilty when I did and that I absolutely would eat them, and then I would be punished.

The whole thing, all of it, is a lie. There is not one word of truth in it. It is just a collection of unquestioned beliefs designed to keep me in hell. There was a time when I decided that carbs were the way to go and that if I ate fats then I would gain weight and because that was my belief, that is what happened. Now carbs make me gain weight and I can eat all the fat I want without effect because that is my belief. See how insane this is? What we believe is true for us.

Why not believe that nothing I eat makes me gain weight excessively? Wouldn’t this be just as true for me? What would it cost me? Well, the whole world as I see it, for one. And I would have to be 100% responsible for everything if that were true. Maybe that is scarier than the alternative. How about this? What if I choose to be punished with weight gain from eating certain foods because it seems preferable to looking at the real source of the guilt? Maybe I think I am guilty in God’s eyes and I find the idea of being guilty in my own eyes as less frightening.

What I always want to remember is that nothing outside me can affect me so the problem must be in my mind. My body is not creative, it cannot create fat out of food regardless of the fact that we have taught ourselves otherwise. The body is a mirror. It only reflects back to us what we believe. Your mirror is not responsible for what you see in it and it cannot make you look different than you do. Same thing with the body. It is only a mirror of your mind.

So ice cream is not a culprit and neither is the body. I am not guilty and afraid of the ice cream or my body. They simply triggered guilt and fear that is already in me.  So the solution will be to change the way I think. I asked the Holy Spirit to remove the belief in fear and guilt from my mind, and there is nothing to be triggered by the ice cream or my body.

Does it matter, after all, if I feel a twinge of guilt when I eat ice cream? Only that in I have lost my peace, and the loss of peace is hell. And if I believe in hell, then hell is always there waiting for me to rediscover it and so I am not free. And now it is a little stronger in the shared mind and so the entire Sonship is experiencing a stronger attachment to guilt. So, yes, it does matter. I am grateful that this morning I peeled away another layer of guilt and fear. This is the Holy Spirit’s use of time. It is undoing the ego, and so undoing hell.

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