Lesson 207

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me.

1 (187) I bless the world because I bless myself.

God’s blessing shines upon me from within my heart, where He abides. I need but turn to Him, and every sorrow melts away, as I accept His boundless Love for me.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me.

Review

I am very attracted to the idea that I bless the world because I bless myself. How else could I bless the world? It is through my acceptance of my Self that I have a blessing to give. My only function is to accept the Atonement for myself and then blessing will flow from me without my effort or even thought.

I also love the rest of this lesson. I love the knowing that God shines from within me, from the center of my being. When I know this, when that knowing is strong in me, I am in joy and in peace and sorrow has no place in me. I accept His boundless Love for me this morning.

I had a very busy day yesterday with lots of running here and there and it went on longer than I would have liked. Today, I am tired and at first, I was fighting that, then realizing what I was doing, I just let my resistance to “what is” go. I am tired and I am happy in my tiredness. It’s funny how that changes the experience.

I understand now that emotions are like thoughts; if I just let them be, they come and go without much effect. They don’t mean anything unless I give them meaning. On the other hand, emotions can point me to a false thought in my mind so that I can release it, but only if I don’t repress or resist. The following is from an earlier entry in my journal. It was from a time that I was learning a different way to experience emotion.

Again, I am reminded that what I do is done for all because we are one whole. So how do I bless myself? This is always some form of choosing God over ego. Sometimes it looks one way and sometimes another, but in content, it is always the same. I might use the word forgive to mean the same thing. When I bring everything not perfect love to the Holy Spirit for correction, I am blessing myself and the world. I am forgiving myself and the world.

I practiced this process in a different way yesterday. The Holy Spirit has suggested that I allow myself to feel whatever comes up with these thoughts. I think this is because I have always run from disturbing emotions and have preferred to stay on the surface of the Course. What I mean by that is I have wanted to do the Course on an intellectual level. I didn’t do this deliberately, but I am being guided to realize that this is what I was doing.

I understand this because the Course was obviously given to meet the need of those of us who view the world in terms of concepts, and this is why I was drawn to it. However, if I stay there on the surface, I will limit the effectiveness. As I have expressed a deep desire for healing, I am being given ways in which I can go to another level.

Yesterday I had a confrontational situation coming up and I did not want to face it. I felt very anxious and my first response was to give this anxiety to the Holy Spirit. Then I thought, “No, I will give Him the thought behind the anxiety and ask Him to correct that thought.” At the same time, I was trying to suppress the anxiety, and the Holy Spirit very gently led me to realize that I was not really asking Him to correct my thoughts; I was asking Him to remove my discomfort. He suggested that I just allow the anxiety to come up and to allow myself to feel it.

I don’t think everyone has the same problem with facing strong emotions that I do, but for some reason, I have always run from them. This has made a barrier in my life that keeps out a lot of good things, as well as keeps me from fully releasing a lot of things I don’t want to keep. The Holy Spirit has helped me to see that in order to give Him anything I must be willing to look with Him at what has come up. I was nervous about doing this as if too much emotion would drown me, or maybe it would never go away. I don’t really understand the fear around this.

I told the Holy Spirit that I was willing to do this if He was beside me, and of course, He is because that is His function. He told me that I could imagine Him being a good friend holding me as I did this. A friend of mine told me that feeling, no matter how unpleasant and how strong, will just come up, peak, and then fade away, and she was right. I allowed myself to experience the anxiety as fully as possible, and none of my fears manifested. I just felt it and it was nothing, really, just a feeling. After it faded away I felt better, but it came back and I went through the process a number of times. Each time taught me that it is just a feeling and that I am not the emotion.

As I did this part of the process, I became aware that I felt a great deal of resentment toward the person involved. I felt it was his fault I was having to go through this. I was really lost in my anger and though I knew it was an error to find him guilty, I was so focused on the ego that I had trouble remembering why. I asked the Holy Spirit to help me see more clearly, and what came to mind was this: What I am feeling is not love. I do not want anything in my mind that is not love. I am willing to see this differently because I want only love.

He was reminding me of my intention and my commitment, and as soon as that thought entered my mind, I felt a wave of peace wash over me. This truly is the only thing that matters. I don’t need to make him wrong so I can be right. I don’t need this confrontation to happen nor is it necessary to my peace that it not happen. I don’t need to be concerned about the meeting at all, and in fact, I realized that now it did not feel like a confrontation to me. I began to wonder how I might best express love to this person. I asked the Holy Spirit to guide me in the meeting.

It turned out to be a very calm meeting without the confrontational mood I had expected. He did say some things that might have been perceived as confrontational if I had arrived with that fear. From time to time I reminded myself of my purpose here; that is to express love in whatever way would be most helpful. I did not go into the meeting in joy, but I think I could do this next time. I did have some fear thoughts come up from time to time during the course of the all day meeting, but I was able to recognize them and release them without acting on them. I really felt that staying in touch with my Higher Self rather than turning to the ego as defense was a blessing to myself. I know that it was a blessing to everyone else in the meeting as well.

Regina’s Tips

Stay with the practice of letting spiritual intuition lead you throughout the day. You don’t need ego to guide you. Ego offers nothing of value. Spiritual intuition is the only guide we want now.

My Thoughts

Exactly. I have learned to sort my thoughts, to recognize what comes from my holy mind and what comes from my ego mind. I have learned that I don’t have to listen to or believe the ego thoughts. The idea that I am tired and that matters and colors my day is an ego thought. The idea that I don’t need to let being tired make me unhappy is spiritual intuition that just turned everything around.