Journal for Day 1

Lessons

After reading the first three and doing the lesson as described for lesson 1, I was surprised when my eyes landed on a statue. I said that this statue does not mean anything and noticed that I felt like it did mean something. I thought that it meant the giver of the statue loves me. She went to a lot of trouble to do this for me. Then as I looked at Lesson 2, I realized that it has meaning because I gave it meaning. And reading Lesson 3, I realized that the reason I don’t understand anything I see is that it is meaningless and I have obscured that fact by giving it meaning. I noticed that I wanted to rush through Lesson 1 thinking I didn’t particularly need it, but clearly, I do.

 

The Way of Mastery Reading

I love The Way of the Heart. I love that he starts by inviting us to accept our reality as creators. Regina calls it casters of attention. In the Course, Jesus is primarily encouraging us to clear the mind of ego, but, of course, he wants our minds to eventually become purified so that we do accept ourselves as we truly are.

I think that sometimes the mind that has always seen itself as a body begins to accept itself as a creator and the two things get confused. So what you have is a creative mind that is doing what it has always done, casting its attention on what it wants and then having that experience, but now it is doing it more consciously.

The problem with that is that this mind that thinks it is a body will try to make a better body or “create” more money or romance or something like that. This can be a time-consuming distraction and a misunderstanding of our true desire for freedom.

So what we must do differently is to realize that while we did all of this to ourselves, and now we want to undo it, we must realize that we don’t know how. We need to keep our dedication to change strong while getting our thinking mind out of the way so that God’s plan for salvation can work. This requires that we trust the flow. Once we make up our minds that we are ready to wake up, we must trust that what shows up is for our awakening and let our only question be, “What is this for?”

“What if the very things you are resisting are the very stepping stones to your homecoming?

 

July 28, 2018, Daily Quote
The Heart that is beyond words is not beyond you. It is only thought that would tell you so. It is only thought that can deceive. Put aside thought, if only for a moment, and then ask, “Am I, when thought isn’t?” Surely you will notice that you are not dependent on thought. Then ask, “Am I, when thought is?” Surely you will notice that whatever you are, it is present both with and without thought.
~ Thoughts of Awakening

I am grateful to know that I am not thought. For the brief moments when thought is not present in my mind, I still exist. Even when thought is a constant chatter in my mind, I exist. So it must be that thought is separate from me. I am relieved to know this because if I were thought, I would not be stable. I would be one thing now and another thing later. I would be bad when the thoughts were bad. I would have to strain to keep only good thoughts in my mind. I’ve tried to do that and it doesn’t work.