V. B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, P 6
6 There can be no conflict between sanity and insanity. Only one is true, and therefore only one is real. The ego tries to persuade you that it is up to you to decide which voice is true, but the Holy Spirit teaches you that truth was created by God, and your decision cannot change it. As you begin to realize the quiet power of the Holy Spirit’s Voice, and Its perfect consistency, it must dawn on your mind that you are trying to undo a decision that was irrevocably made for you. That is why I suggested before that you remind yourself to allow the Holy Spirit to decide for God for you.
Journal
I have been living under the misconception that it is up to me to decide what reality is. I have only two options, I can believe the ego version of reality or I can believe what I hear from the Holy Spirit. But regardless of which I choose to believe, I do not affect reality and only the Holy Spirit speaks the truth. I don’t get to decide what is true, only if I want to believe the truth. Reality is not up for grabs.
Seriously, I am tired of choosing insanity. I am ready to awaken from the dream and live consistently from the truth. I can do this and it is simple to do so. As soon as I recognize that I have chosen the wrong voice, and this is when I am not wholly at peace and in joy, I choose again. I choose the truth by allowing the Holy Spirit to decide for God for me. I really don’t need to make it any more complicated than that, and the desire to do anything else is just a delaying tactic.
This morning I have felt mildly anxious about the weather. Should I go to work or stay off the icy streets? Are they really icy, or did the weather man over state the situation? It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but the ego makes it a big deal. Using the ego mind, I go back in time to other times we had bad weather and use that experience to make this decision.
This is not all that helpful because that time was not exactly like this time and that time I made the decision based on shaky evidence as well. I am dragging the past into the present, which guarantees the future will be the same as the past. This is not what I want to do anymore. This is not joyful or peaceful and so it is not reality regardless of how deeply involved I become in the ego thinking about it.
The ego mind takes into consideration what my boss will think, and soon I find myself having this imaginary conversation with her in which I defend my decision and soon I notice I am angry with her. She hasn’t said a word actually, and I don’t know what she would say. I just project my anxiety onto her and make her guilty, and base my decision on this highly suspect information.
I am projecting and then perceiving wrongly. I am reinforcing the belief in separation and in the belief in attack as defense. I am teaching myself that I am vulnerable and need defense and that my brother is my enemy. This is not joyful or peaceful, so I am not living in reality, even though I am using the ego mind to make it seem real.
Did I say I was mildly anxious? By now the anxiety level is rising considerably. This is just an example of how I think I can affect reality. I hear all this stuff going on in my mind and I believe what I hear. I believe that I am a victim of the weather and an uncaring boss and that my very life is in danger if I make the wrong decision.
The Holy Spirit waits patiently for me to turn to Him to hear the truth. Finally, I ask Him to decide for God for me, and I get on with my morning writing and posting. I wonder how the story will end. When I got to this journal on the Text, I saw what a good example my earlier anxiety was for this very paragraph. That happens a lot. My life gives me an opportunity to practice what it is that I am to learn today. So I started writing about it.
When I got to the part about my imaginary argument with my boss, my phone beeped and I saw I had a text from her. It said that the bridges were closed and she wasn’t going to work until it was safe. By now I was no longer anxious because I had asked to know the truth rather than to pretend to make up my own reality, and it just made me smile to see how simply and perfectly the story unfolded without my interference.