ACIM: As the Course tells us repeatedly, this is an illusory world, and it is a world of problems. But we are not alone in the world.
Leaving My Problems with the Holy Spirit
Leaving My Problems with the Holy Spirit
As the Course tells us repeatedly, this is an illusory world, and it is a world of problems. But we are not alone in the world. The Holy Spirit resides in our minds and is always ready to help us.
⁴Yet you are not asked to dispel your hallucinations alone. ⁵You are merely asked to evaluate them in terms of their results to you. ⁶If you do not want them on the basis of loss of peace, they will be removed from your mind for you. (ACIM, T-8.I.2:4-6)
I am practicing this as I look with to the Holy Spirit to interpret everything for me. And I practice slipping into the silence where I belong. I’m doing this in little moments all through the day. I got the idea from a video by Keith Kavanagh titled, The Holy Spirit is the Silence and Stillness in your mind. And I have to say that even those brief moments of slipping into the Silence have convinced me of its value. It really is like flying free for a little while.
Leaving Worry with the Holy Spirit
Here is how this helped me recently. I have a dear friend who suffers from depression, and something she said recently disturbed me. The moment I opened myself to that worry, thought more followed. I saw several unhappy scenarios quickly flash through my mind. I felt my stomach tighten in anxiety. If I become worried about someone, I stop immediately and question that worry.
I think of worry as being an anti-prayer or a prayer for what I do not want. Instead, I rest a minute in God, relaxing the mind that wants to think about what is wrong. Then I let the Holy Spirit fill my mind with the truth. So, this is what I did in this case. I stopped what I was doing and closed my eyes to block out the world for a moment. I quieted the mind and entered into the Silence. I let the Holy Spirit heal my mind.
It only lasted for a minute or two, but I returned to the world without those upsetting thoughts. They haven’t returned. After this experience, I had the thought that everyone comes into the world for an experience. It isn’t up to me to decide the value and usefulness of someone else’s experience. Instead, I placed my awareness on my friend as she is in truth. In other words, I saw her with Christ’s vision, and I held onto that knowing instead of what my eyes showed me.
Leaving Pain with the Holy Spirit
I’ve been using this form of forgiveness for a few days now, and I have to say that it is very relaxing to do so. Sometimes I just stop what I am doing for no reason other than for the joy of joining with the Holy Spirit. It is good practice, and it helps me form the habit of doing it. I had a grievance against someone the other day, and I went straight into the Silence with it. The grievance faded away in minutes.
Another way I have been using this process is with pain. Lesson 190 tells us that pain is not real. In fact, it says that if pain is real, God is not. And yet, I seem to have pain. Thinking about the pain reminded me of something that happened several years ago.
In order to experience God’s gifts fully, we must accept them into our own minds. I do this when I forgive ideas of pain and suffering and death. I have recently been looking at the idea of pain I have now and my decision to see it differently. Thus far, this is what I have done. When I asked to see it differently, I remembered times that pain had disappeared for me, sometimes for a while and sometimes for good.
Giving a Workshop
Once I was giving a weekend workshop. It was the first time I had offered a workshop that lasted for three days, and I was worried about how it would go. Could I do this for three days and still keep everyone’s attention? Would I be able to stay focused so that Spirit could guide my words for a whole weekend? What happened is that I got a severe migraine, I’m sure from the stress I was causing myself.
I talked to Jesus about it. How could I do this workshop while I had a migraine? I felt him assure me all would be well, and anyway, what choice did I have? I had flown to the town where I was giving the workshop, and people had gathered from other places to attend. So, I just did what needed to be done. The amazing thing is that when I was talking, I had no pain. When I would stop for a break, I would be overcome with pain and go lie down until the break was over.
What I learned From This
This went on for the whole weekend. I learned from that experience that to feel pain, we have to place our awareness on it. When I was speaking, my awareness was only on the workshop. When I stopped speaking, I placed my attention on the pain. Remembering this experience, I understood what Jesus wanted me to know about my present situation.
For the last three days, I have stopped giving the pain my attention. I feel the pain but I don’t think about it. I just let it be, and my experience is that I am not suffering from pain. It is there sometimes, and sometimes it is not, but I am at peace. Since I have been practicing going into the Silence with all upsets. I also started doing that with the pain. With each stab of pain, I remind myself that pain is not real, and then I pause and enter the Silence where I let the Holy Spirit heal my mind. My body is not pain-free yet, and maybe that will happen. But more importantly, my mind is pain-free. It is at peace and is happy.
Choosing True Forgiveness with the Holy Spirit
A Course in Miracles tells me that forgiveness is the means by which salvation is attained, but for this to work, it must be true forgiveness. I had to learn a new way of forgiving. I had it all wrong. Until I learned differently, when I “forgave,” it was actually an attack. I made the other guilty, and then I would attempt to let them off the hook. In true forgiveness, I recognize that the giver and receiver are the same. When I make another guilty, I make myself guilty. If I want to know my own innocence, I must know everyone else as innocent.
It is not enough that I learn a new concept about forgiveness and the law of giving and receiving. I must allow the Holy Spirit to make this true in my mind, which has been so confused from listening to the ego. This is why I sit in silence and allow my mind to be healed. Then I must practice what I am learning until it is all I know about forgiveness.
When I judge, I must recognize that I am making someone guilty, and from that first error, only more error can occur. Instead, I ask the Holy Spirit to show me who the other is so that I can learn who I am. Then true forgiveness is the most natural thing in the world. Who wouldn’t want to forgive the other when they recognize they are one with the other and both are healed through true forgiveness?
It Took Practice
When I first started this study, and for a long time after, I had to be continuously reminded of what true forgiveness means and what it means that I receive as I give. It was, indeed, a foreign concept to me and took practice. One thing that helped me was to work in absolutes. I did not compromise on these truths.
I decided that there was never a time when seeing another person as guilty was true. Nor would it ever work for me to forgive the guilt I believed in. I decided that I would always receive what I gave without exception, and so I strived to give only what I wanted to receive.
Leaving a Grievance with the Holy Spirit
When I was still working, I had a customer who was difficult to deal with. No matter what I did for him, it was never enough. I began to question if he was worth the effort to keep as a customer. I knew that I had to forgive, but he was constantly behaving badly, so that I would have to forgive over and over. I began to wish he would quit his job and move on. I received nothing for my forgiveness efforts, and neither did he.
But I was studying A Course in Miracles, and so eventually, I began to realize that I wasn’t practicing true forgiveness. I was forgiving as the world forgives without regard to who he really was and seeing only his ego flaws. In other words, I made him guilty in my mind and then tried to forgive this guilty person. When I realized what I was doing, I asked the Holy Spirit to heal my mind. I wanted to see him differently, and that desire to see differently was the way to true forgiveness.
I cannot say that my forgiveness of the ideas I had about him changed his behavior a great deal, but it did change the relationship. He began to see me differently when forgiveness allowed me to see him differently. When I stopped seeing the problem as him being guilty and me endlessly pardoning his guilt, the relationship was no longer adversarial. When he wanted more than I could give, he didn’t see it as an attack, so he became more reasonable.
The Relationship Changed
Over time, he became more appreciative of my help. He began to see me more as a partner in his work than as a salesperson out to take advantage of him. I didn’t change what I was doing for him, but I changed how I thought of him through true forgiveness, and this is what changed the relationship. We actually became friends. I realized how forgiven the relationship had become when one day, we ran into each other at Walmart, he smiled and hugged me. It surprised both of us!
What I learned from that experience is this. When I judge, I must recognize that I am making someone guilty, and from that first error, only more errors can occur. Instead, I must ask the Holy Spirit to show me who the other is so that I can learn who I am. Then true forgiveness is the most natural thing in the world. Who wouldn’t want to forgive the other when they recognize they are one with the other and both are healed through true forgiveness?
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