Lesson 144

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.”

 

Journal

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 I am, so I must want to be here. I can be here to play and to punish. I can be here in pretense that I am a victim of this world and that this is somehow normal and inevitable, that this is all there is. I can take it all in and experience it fully and I 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.

Regina’s Tips

“My mind holds only what I think with God.”

The workbook instructions for the review period say, “It is this thought that fully guarantees salvation to the Son. For in his mind no thoughts can dwell but those his Father shares. Lack of forgiveness blocks this thought from his awareness. Yet it is forever true.”

This means that when we let our attention dwell with any thought, emotion or desire that is inevitably temporary, or when we let our attention dwell with anything that it cannot dwell on eternally, we block our realization of truth.

My Thoughts

When my mind dwells on the world of form that form becomes an obstruction to what is true, that is, the thoughts I think with God. I dwell on the world when I get anxious about time, when I worry about money, when I feel upset about a relationship. When I dwell there, I turn to the ego to see what it means and what I can do to save myself.

On the other hand, when these things come up, I can recognize that they are not worthy of my continued attention. If something needs to be done in the world, I can ask within what it means and how it must be dealt with, then let it go. This frees me to “dwell in the House of the Lord” as the Bible phrases it. I think of it as dwelling in the Heart where I commune with God.

Past Entries

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.

 

Releasing the Value I Have Placed on the World

Looking again at the part of the review that says the world holds nothing that I want. Nothing? Not even a home and an income? What about a healthy body? Fulfilling relationships? My daily bread?

When I think that these few things should be exempt – I mean, of course, they should, right? – then I also notice that when I think of not having them I feel the fear as a physical reaction. It’s like someone poked me in the stomach. When I allow my thoughts to wander down that road a little further and I am imagining a life without a job, the anxiety ratchets up a notch. And when I think about looking for another job and all that entails, I notice my jaw is clenched, and I am hunched over my keyboard.

Now I am letting that all go and relaxing my body, allowing my mind to rest a moment. I begin to consider the opposite scenario. I contemplate the idea that the world holds nothing I want as a simple fact. Wouldn’t that be even more frightening? I mean just the thought of not needing those essentials, wouldn’t that feel somehow threatening? But strangely enough (to the thinking mind, anyway) I feel comfortable with the idea. Nothing in the world is important to me. So if I lose my job – how does that feel? If I don’t value having a job, then there is no feeling of loss and no anxiety.

Carrying the thought out some more I think that if I lost my job then I would ask the Holy Spirit what He would have me do. Without the distraction of fearful thoughts, I would very likely be clear-headed and closely attuned to my Inner Teacher. Perhaps I would become aware of an inspired thought. Perhaps I wouldn’t, but I have realized that the world I see holds nothing that I want and so I have no reason to react to this situation. What a different feeling this is from the one I experienced when I had made exemptions to this lesson.

I notice the ego has lots of objections. It is like a small hysterical voice in the back of my mind screaming warnings. It says I have to care about this. How would I live? Do I want to be homeless? I realize that this is not in any way helpful. How does it help the situation to become afraid of losing something in the world? Does valuing the world bring me joy? Does it bring me peace?

The ego says that giving up valuing the world will be giving up all the beauty and all the fun. But is that true? Can I just enjoy whatever is in front of me at the moment and then enjoy what is in front of me the next moment? If I do not place value on keeping it in my world, then the enjoyment will be richer, I think because there is no fear of loss hovering just in the background.

Holy Spirit, I give my willingness to release the value I have placed on the world and all its offerings. I am willing to experience life without fear of loss as I stop grasping at it in panicky neediness. I hear the ego whining about that not being possible, and how are we going to do this, but I also hear You gently reminding me that I need only desire this healing with all my heart, and You will do the healing. Thank you.

 

Assessing My Current Value System

Mentally, I seem to be one day ahead of my lessons. This happened the last few days. Yesterday I worked with the idea that the world I see holds something I want. I said that I am ready to wake up and leave the world as I see it behind. Each time the ego brought up an objection, something I think I need, I looked at it seriously and decided how I felt about it. Each time I honestly evaluated its value to me. Each time I asked myself, “Do I want this thing or do I want to wake up?”

I cannot imagine knowing myself as God’s Son while still longing for a thinner body or a different job. I don’t think that my Self needs someone to love her differently. My Self does not have needs because she knows herself as complete in every way. The little self thinks it has all sorts of needs. The world is filled with things that could fulfill me in all the ways I think I am needy.

This is what I am waking up from, this belief that I am incomplete and have needs. This is why I am looking at these perceived needs and asking myself if I am going to continue chasing them into eternity, or if I am ready to simply turn away from them and allow God to have me. Am I ready to rest in the peace of knowing that I belong to God? That is what I was really asking myself when I assessed my current value system.

 

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 were 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.

And Now…

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 occuring 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 the 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.