Lesson 144

My mind holds only what I think with God.

“There is no love but God’s.”

“The world I see holds nothing that I want.”

MY REVIEW

When I contemplate the world, I know it has no value because it is not Love. There are moments when it reflects that love and those moments are the true miracles. In every disaster there are heroes who give their lives to protect others, who step forward to help when others are in need. When I read those stories, I cry because it is so beautiful to see God’s Love reflected even in the dream. Even in shows where someone is kind, giving, loving, I cry for the beauty of it.

We are the Love that is God and so love echoes all around us and in us and the more we see its value the more we are drawn to the loving and to express the loving. We can suppress love but we cannot destroy it or even change it in the minutest of ways, because of the Source of Love from which all loving expressions flow. We can only learn that we are that Love as well and we learn that by being loving and by desiring only love.

It is helpful to learn what is not a reflection of love. Selfishness, judgment, fearfulness, and guilt are not love and so no part of these behaviors is of God and nothing done through them will bring happiness and peace. None of those ideas are part of my mind which holds only God. They are ego ideas and part of the world made to explore all things not God. I want no part of that world.

And yet, here we are, so we must want to be here. Perhaps we came here to play and to punish. We can be here in the pretense that we are a victim of this world and that this is somehow normal and inevitable, that this is all there is. We can take it all in and experience it fully and we should. But there is another way of being in the world that releases me from the world. There is a higher purpose for being here and every morning and every night I am setting an intention to know the unique form of that purpose, the form meant for me, and then I spend a few minutes letting my mind imagine living that purpose and the joy it brings me.

I am into several years of keeping a journal of these lessons and I am struck by the change that has occurred in my mind, sometimes without me realizing it, often the change was occurring even as I was worrying that nothing was happening. I think that doing the exercises suggested are important, but maybe not for the reason I thought. I am using the thinking mind to finally realize that it is not the thinking mind that is changing. I am not changing myself with these lessons. What is actually happening is that I am being changed.

Those five minutes of contemplation of the idea that my mind holds only what I think with God, those moments of letting the Holy Spirit have my mind, this is when the change is wrought. It is in whatever moments I dedicate to God that the real change occurs. It is like an end-run around the ego. It thinks it is doing something because it is given tasks like remembering to contemplate, like noticing when I am choosing wrongly, like deciding to change my mind. But all along, the Holy Spirit quietly and efficiently does Its job with whatever spare moments I dedicate to stillness.

In spite of my lack of self-discipline, it seems to be enough to create real change. I almost never have days like the ones I wrote about in these earlier journal entries. Now I have moments of forgetfulness in which I think there is something in the world that matters to me, something I must have. There are moments in which I become confused about love. Now I recognize this error immediately and I turn to Spirit for correction.

Now it is so much clearer to me that my mind holds only what I think with God, and when it seems to hold something else, I understand that I am having a meaningless dream in which I imagine impossible scenarios. All along, my pristine mind is unaffected by my dreams. I am seldom confused and though I still have times when I experience self-doubt and uncertainty, and those times are truly unpleasant as I work through them, I never really believe in them.  Most importantly, now I understand that my only real job here is to desire correction above all else, and the Holy Spirit does the rest. Now I am so much happier and more peaceful. Thank you, God.

The following are a couple of past entries from my journal. Things were not always so clear to me but my life has brought me to where I am now and I am beyond grateful.

A Cosmic Joke?

This occurred one morning while I was still working.

I generally start my day quite early. I deliberately go to sleep early so that I can get up early. It is not always easy to do this because it puts me on a schedule that conflicts with most others, but I go to a bit of trouble to arrange my life in this way. The problem with making arrangements is that it is upsetting when they don’t work. I am starting to connect this with the lesson about not planning and about making no decisions on my own.

In spite of my carefully laid plans, this morning I got up a little later than usual. I felt a moment of frustration, but ignored it and turned on my computer. I got my usual cup of coffee and prepared to check my emails while the stimulant jolted my brain. The computer started acting up. Again, another unrealized expectation and the day had hardly begun.

I spent about an hour trying to figure out what was wrong with my computer, all along being frustrated and feeling picked on by the world. What was interesting to me was that a part of my mind was watching this whole scenario unfold and was (I swear!) chuckling at my reaction. This part of my mind noticed that I had made plans on my own and didn’t like it one bit that they were not working out. It noticed that I was throwing blame around in a frantic effort to make someone or something guilty.

It was Dell’s fault for not making a better computer, and probably Bill Gate’s fault as well for creating Microsoft – the system you can’t live with and can’t live without. It was my boss’s fault for insisting I go to work so early and so leaving me little time to do my Daily Lesson. It was God’s fault. I’m doing what He wants me to do so where is He when I need Him? Isn’t He supposed to move every stone or something?

With a little nudging from the sane part of my mind, I took a break from the battle and looked at today’s review. The world I see holds nothing I want. Is this a cosmic joke, or what? Could this possibly mean my computer, too? How about getting this work done? Surely this is exempt from things in the world I don’t want. My small ego mind argued awhile longer with my glorious light-filled holy mind, but what are you going to say to absolutes like, the world holds NOTHING I want.

About that time, I get a message on my screen that says my update is complete and my computer will now restart. It may not have taken so long if I had not been turning the thing on and off and trying to do all sorts of things while the update was trying to install. Well, if Holy Spirit has a sense of humor, He most surely is laughing at this morning’s lesson.

Will I Join With Ego or With God?

Last night as I got ready for bed, I had an old familiar thought. I wish the weekend was not over. It had been such a lovely weekend. I wished I did not have to go to work in the morning. Then I stopped myself and looked at that thought with Spirit. What did I use to interpret that idea of going to work? Since it brought unrest with it, it must be the ego. So I gently laid that aside, and I asked the Holy Spirit for His interpretation. Then I went to bed.

Every morning now, I decide I will make no decisions on my own and then I decide on the day I would have, the things I would experience, what I want to happen, how I would feel. I know this day will be given me if I make no decisions on my own. And of course, I cannot make decisions on my own. I make them in union whether it be with ego or God.

This morning as I let my mind settle into the choices I would make, I realized that what I want is that the day continues just as it is now. I feel happy and peaceful, and deeply in love with God. What else could I want for my day? I am overwhelmed with gratitude. What happened to that sense of loss I experienced last night at the thought of leaving the weekend behind? I made a different decision as I used a different advisor. I let go of what I thought the world needs to be and let the Holy Spirit show me what it can be.