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Study of Text, C 14: VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 5. 6-9-17

The Holy Meeting Place, P 4
5 The link with which the Father joins Himself to those He gives the power to create can never be dissolved. Heaven itself is union with all of creation, and with its one Creator. And Heaven remains the Will of God for you. Lay no gifts other than this upon your altars, for nothing can coexist with it. Here your little offerings are brought together with the gift of God, and only what is worthy of the Father will be accepted by the Son, for whom it is intended. To whom God gives Himself, He is given. Your little gifts will vanish on the altar, where He has placed His Own.

Journal

A strange thing happened when I read this. I had a clear thought that I am in union with God and all creation and that I create through the power given me by God. I am a creator as God is a Creator. I don’t know, this was meaningful to me in a way that has never happened before. I saw the whole world fall away and everything that I think I am went with it and it scared me.

It all happened in a nanosecond, and I was surprised by it. I guess the biggest surprise was that I felt fear at the thought. That was, of course, the ego self that had the fear reaction. It prefers to think of itself as small and inadequate.  It is afraid of the idea of that kind of power. That part of the mind has reason to fear power.

Look how much suffering has occurred with the misuse of power, eons of suffering, a whole world of suffering. The ego believes it is better to stay small than to take responsibility for what has been done, and far better to stay small than to assume responsibility for its own power. Safer, it thinks, to deny it is doing anything at all. Fortunately, I know too much to bury my head in the sand anymore, and while there is fear, there is also acceptance. Evidently, there is that bit of conflicting desires, still, but not forever.

How does the ego mind manage to stay so deeply in denial and why do I allow it? Well, the why is clear. I am afraid of what has been done in the name of exploration, of discovery, of innocent curiosity. The answer to this is that nothing has actually been done, and I am both innocent and safe. I am slowly coming around to this truth, but obviously, I still do not entirely believe that my dream is not reality.

The first part of that question, how do I do it, how do I keep the illusion going, is also clear to me. Instead of accepting God’s gift of union and creation, which scare me, I accept the ego’s gifts of self-identity. I tell myself it is a gift of great value and I spend lifetime after lifetime trying to make those gifts more valuable through improving them and adding to them.

In this life story, I am mother and grandmother. I have been a successful worker and wage earner. I am teacher and preacher and author. I am respected and appreciated. I have spent a lifetime developing these gifts, improving on them and convincing myself they matter. Am I supposed to just throw this all away now that I have achieved so much I was trying for? Could it be I have spent lifetime after lifetime valuing what has no value?

Everything that is part of how I describe myself or think of myself is a gift of ego to take the place of my true identity. Here is what I know about my identity as taught me by Jesus. I am spirit. I am eternal. I am invulnerable. I am divine. I am part of God, in God, like God. I am a creator as God is a creator. I am pure love. My mind is so vast that it holds the universe. I am fearless. I am whole, complete and unassailable. I am beautiful. I am holy. None of this is questionable and it is true for eternity. So which do I want to identify with, the ego gifts I have been offered, or the truth of what I am?

© 2017, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, C 14: VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 4. 6-7-17

VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 4
4 There is no substitute for truth. And truth will make this plain to you as you are brought into the place where you must meet with truth. And there you must be led, through gentle understanding which can lead you nowhere else. Where God is, there are you. Such is the truth. Nothing can change the knowledge, given you by God, into unknowingness. Everything God created knows its Creator. For this is how creation is accomplished by the Creator and by His creations. In the holy meeting place are joined the Father and His creations, and the creations of His Son with Them together. There is one link that joins Them all together, holding Them in the oneness out of which creation happens.

Journal
Where is this holy meeting place where I remember the knowledge given me by God, and where I meet with God and His creations, and the Son’s creations? Where is this I meet and see that we are joined together as one? This can only be in the mind. I am mind, and I can be no other place so it must be possible for me to reach this holy meeting place. How could it not, if the place is in me?

Lesson 158 tells us this.

What has been given you? The knowledge that you are a mind, in Mind and purely mind, sinless forever, wholly unafraid, because you were created out of love. Nor have you left your Source, remaining as you were created. This was given you as knowledge which you cannot lose. It was given as well to every living thing, for by that knowledge only does it live.

It also tells us that this is an experience and cannot be learned or taught. It is given us, and here in the Text, Jesus is telling us that we can reach this experience. Lesson 158 goes on to tell us that there is something we can learn and that is Christ Vision. We learn Christ Vision as we give up our grievances.

So I do this. I release all grievances as I become aware of them. I clear the way to knowledge. It is there, and must be there, but I remain unaware of it until I have done my part. Once I make the decision to release my grievances, I sit in silence and allow healing to occur in my mind, and I wait for the experience of joining to be revealed to me.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, C 14: VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 3. 6-6-17

VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 3
3 Let your mind wander not through darkened corridors, away from light’s center. You and your brother may choose to lead yourselves astray, but you can be brought together only by the Guide appointed for you. He will surely lead you to where God and His Son await your recognition. They are joined in giving you the gift of oneness, before which all separation vanishes. Unite with what you are. You cannot join with anything except reality. God’s glory and His Son’s belong to you in truth. They have no opposite, and nothing else can you bestow upon yourself.

Journal
I want to return to the recognition of my Self, to awaken to my Oneness with God. Jesus is telling me three things in this paragraph to help me do this. He indicates that it is done in union with my brothers because the Son of God is all of us together. So I know that it is very important that I give up all grievances. Obviously, holding grievances will prevent me from returning to my Self because they prevent me from being in union with my One Whole Self.

A second thing he tells me is that I must not let my mind wander into the darkness, away from the light. I do this when I judge and believe in guilt, which of course, leads to grievances. In fact, what I am starting to notice is that Jesus talks to us about judgment, guilt, fear, anger, hatred, jealousy, grievances and all the ego effects, but really, they are all the same thing.

I can use the word guilt, and within that idea are all the other effects of listening to ego. I believe in guilt, which makes me afraid. I judge others and this makes me feel guilty and thus afraid. I am angry with someone and this triggers guilt, which leads to fear. It is all the same. Jesus uses the word forgiveness and it is the same as healing, accepting the Atonement, seeing it differently, and undoing. In fact, the longer I study A Course in Miracles, the simpler it becomes.

I think I am separate from God and from my brothers, and because I believe this, it appears to be true to me. I suffer the consequences of this belief until I am ready to awaken from it. Then I am led to the experiences that show me something else is available and that I want it. I see that my life is not at random and that I have done this to myself, but that it can be undone.

This leads to the third thing that Jesus is telling us in this paragraph. The way I return to the awareness of my Divinity and my Unity is through the Holy Spirit. As I look with the Holy Spirit rather than the ego mind, all is forgiven, I am healed, it is undone, and I see it differently. It is done for me, and the only way I get there is through Him. I dreamed of a different existence and then I wake up to what remains untouched and unaffected by my illusions. This is, literally, all that is happening.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, C 14: VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 2. 6-5-17

VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 2
2 He shares it still, for you. Everything that promises otherwise, great or small, however much or little valued, He will replace with the one promise given unto Him to lay upon the altar to your Father and His Son. No altar stands to God without His Son. And nothing brought there that is not equally worthy of Both, but will be replaced by gifts wholly acceptable to Father and to Son. Can you offer guilt to God? You cannot, then, offer it to His Son. For they are not apart, and gifts to One are offered to the Other. You know not God because you know not this. And yet you do know God and also this. All this is safe within you, where the Holy Spirit shines. He shines not in division, but in the meeting place where God, united with His Son, speaks to His Son through Him. Communication between what cannot be divided cannot cease. The holy meeting place of the un-separated Father and His Son lies in the Holy Spirit and in you. All interference in the communication that God Himself wills with His Son is quite impossible here. Unbroken and uninterrupted love flows constantly between the Father and the Son, as Both would have it be. And so it is.

Journal
My life as I experience it now is a dichotomy. I am a woman, a body, a personality; I am spirit. I am guilty; I am innocent. I love, I hate. I do not know what I am, and I know very well what I am. There is what I think of myself and then there is what is true about me. What I think about myself is mine alone and cannot be shared. What I think about myself I cannot offer to God.

But there is a place in me that is real, an altar where I meet my Brother and where I meet God. In this meeting place, there is no separation, no interference. There is unbroken and uninterrupted love flowing between Father and Son.  The Holy Spirit keeps this place within me. I can visit it in my meditation and sometimes in my dreams, but how do I stay there?

Jesus makes it clear that I cannot dwell in God alone. I must join with my brothers because there is no Self alone. Jesus simplifies this by telling me that I must not offer to my brothers what I would not offer to God. I cannot offer my brother resentment or anger, not fear and not jealousy because these are not offerings fit for God, and my brothers are in no way separate from God.

Another way to think of this is to realize that I cannot enter the Kingdom (God) if I attack His Son. Obviously, His Son is of His Kingdom and to attack Him is to attack God. Each time I see that I am offering my brother something unworthy of God I remember the stakes. Is guilt so important to me, so necessary to my sense of self that I am willing to forfeit Heaven in order to preserve guilt? Is guilt so important to me that I would renounce God rather than to relinquish it?

We are a Thought in the Mind of God, and thoughts leave not their source. There is no way we can be separated from God, but we can be lost to the memory of where we are and what we are. The pain of thinking we are separated from God is as hideous as being lost to God, thus this elaborate ego deception we maintain to hide from our loss.

Who could face such a thing day in and day out without going mad? And all along, we remain God’s holy child, safe and whole and perfect as He created us, only dreaming of self-destruction. Wake up! Wake up! Wake up to Reality. Remember that it is only in defenselessness that your safety lies. Stop striking out in fear and anger at your brothers and start reaching out in love and acceptance. This is the miracle that will awaken us all.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, C 14: VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 1. 6-5-17

VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 1
1 In the darkness you have obscured the glory God gave you, and the power He bestowed upon His guiltless Son. All this lies hidden in every darkened place, shrouded in guilt and in the dark denial of innocence. Behind the dark doors you have closed lies nothing, because nothing can obscure the gift of God. It is the closing of the doors that interferes with recognition of the power of God that shines in you. Banish not power from your mind, but let all that would hide your glory be brought to the judgment of the Holy Spirit, and there undone. Whom He would save for glory is saved for it. He has promised the Father that through Him you would be released from littleness to glory. To what He promised God He is wholly faithful, for He shares with God the promise that was given Him to share with you.

Journal
The Holy Spirit has a job to do, and He will not fail. His promise is that He will awaken us to our glory and He is faithful to His pledge. As each of us becomes ready to let go of the ego separation idea, the Holy Spirit directs and guides and heals. How could we fail when we have this certain help? As we accept His help, our awareness of reality is restored.
The only thing that stands between us and the power and glory bestowed on us in our creation is a system of beliefs that allowed us to have this experience. Now that we are ready to awaken from this dream state, the Holy Spirit looks with us at these beliefs and shines the light of truth on them. Their illusory nature becomes so apparent that we withdraw our belief and lose interest in them. The world of separation dissolves, and we see the love and innocence that has always been there.

The way this worked for me and many others, I am sure, is that I began to pay attention to my thoughts. I gradually accepted that they were powerful whether they were real thoughts or not. This new way of perceiving the power of my thoughts pointed to a self that was different than the vulnerable and weak person I had thought myself to be. I had not known that I had such power.

From this more enlightened understanding, I let the Holy Spirit guide me to other truths, and I began to consider the possibility that I was not the guilty person I had believed I was. It made sense to me that I could not change what God created unchangeable, and so I started accepting the Holy Spirit’s offer to heal my mind of the belief that my assumed guilt could be real and permanent.

After some time, I surrendered my mind to the Holy Spirit without reservation. I knew I wanted to remember who I am and so asked what was to be done next, and I did it to the best of my ability. Not to say this was quick or easy, but it did remain simple. The Holy Spirit would point me to a thought that needed to be seen. I would look at it, feel the repercussions of believing it, and then decide to let my mind be corrected by Him. Slowly but steadily, the Holy Spirit and I uncovered enough of the untrue thoughts to let light shine in my darkened mind.

My mind is no longer dark with ego thinking. I still have some shadows and dark corners to explore with the Holy Spirit. But no matter how real the ego story seems to get, I never completely believe it, and I am always willing to be enlightened. There is no hard work rebuilding what I lost because I never lost it. It remains a simple matter of removing what I am no longer interested in believing, and God gave me His Holy Spirit to be sure I had all the help I needed. Thank you, God. I love you, God.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

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