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Study of the Text 12-4-12

12-4-12
2 A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct. This sense of separation would never have arisen if you had not distorted your perception of truth, and had thus perceived yourself as lacking. The idea of order of needs arose because, having made this fundamental error, you had already fragmented yourself into levels with different needs. As you integrate you become one, and your needs become one accordingly. Unified needs lead to unified action, because this produces a lack of conflict.

This paragraph begins by telling me that I have not actually separated from God by telling me I only have a sense of separation. He says that this happened when I distorted my perception of truth. So what I am experiencing as actuality is not real. I have to wonder what the world would look like if I had not distorted my perception of the truth. I would have had a happy dream, I think, and I will still have that happy dream as I allow my perception to be corrected and brought nearer the truth.

When I distorted my perception so that I could see myself as something other than one and whole this created a sense of lack. Of course it did! I had never known anything other than wholeness, and now I was less than that. This fragmentation of Self appeared as many levels with different needs. Then I began to organize these needs according to some order, fragmenting them further as I decided which was most important and which I felt more compelled to fill.

Awhile back a very large rock hit my windshield. It cause a big round crack which I have been watching as it slowly creeps across the windshield in various directions, taking on different designs as it does so. It began in a confined area with a specific shape and now there are cracks going off in different directions and each of those cracks has its own design.

I can imagine my error in thinking having similar effects. Maybe it went something like this. First I imagine a setting for something entirely different, which sets up perception because “entirely different” is not truth so I needed a way of making it all happen. Instead of creating something different, I am now using the mechanism of perception to experience it as if it is different. Maybe I could think of that as imagining it different, or as the Course says, I am dreaming.

But then I want a more intense experience, something more believable, so I distort perception until it no longer resembles the truth in any way. Now I have the seeming experience of being separate from God. That’s when it all got away from me. Like the crack in my window the fragmenting didn’t stop with the one break, but continued on and on, fragmenting over and over, making many things, many bodies, many desire and needs, until seemingly becoming endless and hopeless. I became so far from Wholeness that I cannot imagine getting back.

Good thing this was planned for and the Holy Spirit is the Voice and the guide that keeps me forever connected to God. So here I am on the outer edges of this incredibly complex fragmentation and beginning to wake up to the truth that I am not this and don’t want to hang out here as if I am. I am beginning to listen to that Voice and work my way back home. It seems like an impossible and endless journey because I see all those needs stretching before me, all those errors, some impossibly big and others smaller, some urgent and some just waiting its turn, and I cannot imagine coming to the end of them.

It is very reassuring to read that there are not really a lot of needs, nor are there levels to those needs. There is just one lack I need to correct, the belief that I have separated from God. All the distorted fragmentation is dissolved in that one correction. This is my only true goal, my real destination and I am excited to know this. As I continue this study of the text, and as I listen closely to the Voice for God, I will receive more clarity, and more instructions and guidance on how to reach my one goal.

Today the Holy Spirit has asked me to remember what everything is for. When I feel I need something, no matter how minor or how important the sense of lack is, I will remember that I have one lack only, and that this seeming need is a symbol of that one lack. A sense of separation from God is the only lack I really need correct. I am being asked today to open my mind to that simple thought and become willing to accept it.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text 12-3-12

12-4-12
VI. The Illusion of Needs
1 You who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness. No learning is acquired by anyone unless he wants to learn it and believes in some way that he needs it. While lack does not exist in the creation of God, it is very apparent in what you have made. It is, in fact, the essential difference between them. Lack implies that you would be better off in a state somehow different from the one you are in. Until the “separation,” which is the meaning of the “fall,” nothing was lacking. There were no needs at all. Needs arise only when you deprive yourself. You act according to the particular order of needs you establish. This, in turn, depends on your perception of what you are.

In the beginning there was everything, and nothing was lacking. There was not even a concept of lacking, or of needs. Then came the “fall” or the “separation from God,” in which we began to imagine that things were different. We experienced ourselves in a state of separation, separate from God, separate from each other, each thing separate from us and from every other thing.

Space and time seem to exist and everything is further separated. Now I can be different from you and I can be in a different place, at a different time, and I can have some thing you don’t have. This had never been possible until now because before there was only one whole and there was no separation. Separation feels wrong and I want everything back. And it seems like that other one has it.

So, here I think I am. I am in this point in space and in this time. I am reduced to a bit of flesh and bones and further differentiated by sex, by shape, by size, and with the idea of time, by age. I see someone over there with a slimmer body, a younger body, and I feel deprived. I want what that person has. I have a whole list of preferred conditions having to do with the body, with circumstances and with relationships. In each one I seem to fall short of someone else. I have needs. I lack.

I am discontented, alone, and afraid. I want my needs to be met and yet I feel a vague discomfort about it because it seems that my needs are met often at the expense of someone else. I would think that this endless dividing of the whole would make more, but instead, it seems to produce a state in which there is only so much and I have to grab my bit before someone else does.

This incessant need to take from others what we feel we must have to be happy sometimes takes on global proportions and we have world wars, but really, we are at war in every moment of our lives. We are always jostling for a better place, a bigger piece of the pie. We see winning as the effect of someone else losing. And no matter how much we accumulate, we are left feeling needy because we don’t know what it is we lack.

Since I don’t know what I need I spend my lives assigning that role to each and every separated thing. I need a better body, a better mate, a better job, a better car, a better friend. The list is endless because no matter what I get it fails to satisfy. At some point I have to believe there must be a better way. At some point I absolutely will choose to find that better way.

This is my time. This is the time in which I realize that I am seeking for happiness and peace in the wrong places. I will never find peace through war. I cannot achieve happiness at the expense of someone else. I stopped trying to get more customers from my competitors, and started trying to find ways to help the people in my industry. I lost interest in having a fancier car, a bigger house, nicer clothes; I lost interest in things, and I have stopped needing to be superior to someone else.

I stopped trying to make more money than the other guy and started trying to do the best job I could do. I stopped being envious of the younger, slimmer body someone else has. I stopped using this body as a way to get what I thought I lacked.  I stopped using this body to reward myself or to punish myself. I stopped using this body to make myself feel better than or less than. I began to ask Holy Spirit to use this body in a way that would help us all, as a communication devise, a tool to help us awaken.

I was unhappy, not because of any actual lack, but because I had a certain perception of myself, and from that perception I decided what I needed to improve that perception. Each time I achieved something it would be at the expense of another and the guilt of taking and of further separating that which God made whole, would leave me feeling more deprived than ever. So I was doing this to myself.

The solution is full forgiveness. I start with whatever is happening in my life at the moment and I forgive it. I forgive the other person for appearing prettier, happier, richer, and more satisfied than me. I forgive myself for wanting what they have, and for coveting what I seem to lack. I forgive myself for the war I am waging within my own mind. I forgive myself for believing I am separate, separate from everyone and everything else, separate from God.

Without this sense of endless neediness driving my thoughts and actions, I am open to another way. I begin to see things differently. Instead of looking at a competitor I see a man who is confused, just like I used to be confused. He thinks he needs my customer in order to be happy and so sees me as the source of his discontent. He and I want the same thing. We both want to be happy, to be peaceful and to feel safe. I used to be confused about what would help me achieve those goals, and so I understand his confusion. I forgive us both.

The more areas to which I apply this in my life the more peaceful and happy I become. This is because forgiveness removes the barriers to our wholeness. As I forgive the false needs I placed on the body I am content with it. I don’t need it to be the way I receive attention or the way I punish myself for my perceived sins. I forgive myself and forgive my body, and that war is over. Without war there is peace.

As I forgive my relationships and I forgive myself for using these relationships as a way of getting more of what I think I need, I am free to simply love. I love the one who stands before me. This is so simple to do because I don’t need him to be anything for me, therefore he cannot disappoint me. As I get better at this and do more forgiveness work I see that no one is special. Each person receives all my love. It seems ridiculous that I have spent my life singling out individuals to love according to their ability and willingness to fulfill my needs, needs which I made up.

I want peace. I am willing to completely forgive. Holy Spirit, please help me to see clearly. Please help me when I become distracted. Please help me to wake up. I forgive myself for believing I am separate from my brothers and sisters and from God. Please help me to see where I still believe in separation so that I can let that be healed.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

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