Lesson 148

Lesson 148

My mind holds only what I think with God.

“If I defend myself I am attacked.”

“Sickness is a defense against the truth.”

 

Journal

On a holiday, I spent time with my family. Two things happened that were part of my lesson for the day. I was watching my older daughter cooking and she was trying to get cornbread out of the muffin pan and was having trouble. I knew a better way to do it and told her to let me do it for her. She just said, “Mom.”

In that one expressive word she was saying “let me do it myself” and “really, I’m 48 years old. I think I can do this without help.” Haha. I backed off remembering how often I tried to do things for my kids when it would have been better to let them learn from their efforts. Probably there was a time when I would have been hurt or embarrassed by her reaction, but this time I just smiled. I did not feel any desire to defend myself. A lot has changed for me over the last few years.

On the other hand, my son said something that felt unkind and disrespectful and I worried over that for most of the day, turning it over in my mind and wondering what it meant about our relationship. Finally, I released it to the Holy Spirit to be reinterpreted for me. Probably it didn’t mean anything, just his weird sense of humor.

But no matter what it meant, it was a problem for me only if I defended myself from it. When I do that, it feels frightening because there is really nothing to defend against and no way to defend myself against nothing that feels like something. In defending myself, even just in my mind, I was attacking my peace. In retrospect I realize that I am never upset for the reason I think and so it was doubly ridiculous for me to defend myself. I am not completely free of the belief I need to defend myself but I am free of the belief that it is a good idea.

Another useless form of defense is sickness. It is a deliberate attempt at self-deception. When I am sick it is because I want to be. I use it to hide from the truth of what I am. If I am sick, my first question to myself is why did I do this? The answer is always the same; I did this so that I could go on pretending that I don’t know who I am. That is how I heal myself and the healing proceeds according to my desire to lay my defenses aside and accept the truth.

Regina’s Tips

My mind holds only what I think with God.

I have noticed since beginning this review that something is shifting in me. There is greater confidence than there was before in the efficiency of the direct path and in my desire and ability to remain focused on it. I feel as if I am learning now to “claim again” my inheritance.

My Thoughts

I feel the same way as Regina. I feel like this is happening for me as the result of this gentle healing process as well as a focus on meditating on accepting who I am. I am also receiving transmissions from my beloved brother, Jesus and this is helping as well. Add that to the work I do daily with students and some very helpful work I do with some Pathways of Light courses and it is all working together to help me wake up. And I feel the difference.

Past Entries

I am including all the entries I have for this lesson because it shows the progression of my understanding of this lesson and the progression of the healing of my mind as I accepted the meaning more deeply as time went on. I think it is also helpful to look at this because it was about physical healing, which I think nearly everyone has had challenges with at times.

2007

I have been thinking a lot about sickness. I accept that sickness is a defense against the truth because I have noticed that when I get too close to the truth, my unconscious response can be sickness. It can be a regular body response, and also it is often an emotional response such as sadness, fear, and anxiety.

I also know that sickness is a defense against the truth because when I am in pain my world revolves around that pain. I am intently focused on the pain and it is as if nothing else exists. I am only interested in ways to relieve the pain. This, of course, places me firmly in the body where I think God cannot reach me. It is not until the pain is gone that I am able to look at what it might signify.

But lately, I notice that when I am sick, while I do respond as if I am a body and getting well is my goal, I also notice that it is not my only goal. All the time that I am taking medicine, resting, seeing a doctor or whatever I feel I need to do to relieve myself of the pain, I am also asking the Holy Spirit how I can use this to undo the ego. The first time I did this, I was very excited because I recognized that the only true healing takes place in the mind where the sickness is. Actually, I still feel excited every time I remember the truth, even if I am not willing to give it my full attention.

Me: Holy Spirit, I feel guilty when I have to take medicine, which is nearly every time I get sick. I do it anyway, but I know that guilt is not helpful. Would you talk to me about this?

Holy Spirit: Myron, you are, of course, right about guilt not being helpful. No matter what seems to be in your life it is the result of looking in to find an answer and then looking out to see what that answer is. And the answer you see when you look out shows you who you asked. If you look out and see sickness you did not ask Me for an answer.

This is the value of being aware that everything is in your life by your invitation. Now that you are no long wasting time blaming someone or something else for what is happening to you, you can recognize that you are the author of the dream, and you can begin to understand that the dream itself will inform you of your teacher. If the dream is not one of love and peace, then simply choose the other teacher.

Myron, allow me to remind you that it doesn’t matter if you use magic to heal the body. The body is no more real than the medicine is. The magic could not work had you not given it permission to do so. One day you will not need that intermediate step. You will simply give yourself permission to heal without magic being part of it. One day you will be free of guilt and will no longer experience illness.

Would you feel guilty because you are not in a different place on your path? You are exactly where you need to be at this moment. You need what you are learning this day. If you notice your guilt and notice that what you are experiencing is a result of your thoughts and your choice of teachers, then you are doing what you need to do right now. I am grateful to you for your decision to be vigilant. I do not ask you to do more than this. Your vigilance will bring you to the next place in your journey.

2009

I have noticed a subtle shift in my response to sickness. Because I am so aware of sickness as a defense against truth I experience it differently now. I feel the physical symptoms but not believing them seems to lessen them in some way. When I feel pain I accept it and allow it and even feel gratitude because it is pointing to that which I need to see differently. I see a purpose in this pain, and I see it as a signpost that shows me the way to the alleviation of all pain. It is hard to find words to describe this exactly.

Perhaps this difference can be seen more clearly if I look at the lesson, “If I defend myself I am attacked.” When I feel defensive about sickness and pain I place my focus on it and the pain becomes my world. When I simply accept that I am feeling pain and shift my focus to the purpose the Holy Spirit finds for me in this pain, purpose is my world.

Instead of existing to relieve myself of pain, I exist to heal the mind of wrong-minded thinking. I am no longer defending myself, and so no longer attacking myself. The question shifts from, “How can I defend the body from this pain” to “How can I use this experience to wake up?”

Another change that comes from allowing is that I never feel guilty for taking medicine. In fact, now the idea of guilt for taking medicine feels ridiculous. It makes me think about Byron Katie. She says she never argues with reality. When my experience is one of bodily suffering then that is my present reality. So I take something to relieve the suffering even as I look to the Holy Spirit for how He would have me use this moment, and what He would teach me about it.

Will I one day not need medicine? Most certainly. Will that happen in this lifetime? I don’t know. Another thing Katie says is that there are only three kinds of business; my business, your business, and God’s business. God’s business is what I cannot control and you cannot control. I am much more peaceful when I let go of God’s business. I used to obsess over the idea of awakening this time so I don’t have to come back. Now I simply take care of what is in front of me and leave the rest where it belongs; I leave it with God.

2011

I have had some physical challenges lately, and I became tired of all the pain. I began to feel exhausted and discouraged. One of the problems was pain in my back, which was even worse once I went back to work. I thought about all that driving, and how it was beating up on my body and decided I needed to quit my job to get some relief. The more I thought about it, the more I just knew this was the perfect solution. Without the constant time on the road, my body would heal. It began to seem very important that I quit and I actually talked to my boss about it.

I was discussing this with my kids when two of them asked me if I would really enjoy the alternative I had chosen, which was to work in the office. As I thought about this, I knew that I would really hate that, and this reminded me of something more important. When my world seems to have gone screwy, it is not the world that needs to be fixed, but rather my mind. My thoughts need correction, not their effects.

So this is what I did. I asked the Holy Spirit to look with me at my thoughts. I asked for healing. I let go of the idea that I needed to know what anything meant, that I needed to understand any of it. I fully surrendered my thinking mind and accepted the Holy Spirit’s healing. Within a couple of days the frustration, the anger, and fear that I had been feeling were gone. I was happy to get back to work, feeling energetic and looking forward to seeing my customers. And the pain that had been my daily companion for weeks began to disappear.

Holy Spirit, thank you for helping me to see that the ego’s plan for salvation does not work.

2015

What I fully accept now is there is only one cause of sickness and that is the ego beliefs I still hold in my mind. I see that sickness is a defense against God. I see that all forms of suffering are the result of the thoughts and beliefs in my mind and that the only cure is that my mind is healed. The body is not creative. It cannot “get” sick. My thinking is sick and it is then projected outward as a sick body or a sick relationship, or even a sick financial situation. The solution has nothing to do with the world I see but must be directed at the mind that projects the world.

I used to get headaches a lot, migraines even. Slowly, I let that go. I began to notice that every time I got a headache,  I also felt stressed or anxious. I was holding onto and believing the ego thoughts in my mind and the form these thoughts took began as a headache. When I saw that clearly, I began to immediately examine my thoughts with the Holy Spirit and release the false beliefs to Him. Now I almost never keep a headache for more than a few minutes because I have quit believing in them. I think it is interesting that this is not true for every ailment. Sometimes I get sick in some other way and it takes longer for me to accept that the illness is not real, and so I cannot really be sick. But I never fail to realize that I did this to myself and that it is the mind that needs healing.