Lesson 84

Lesson 84
These are the ideas for today’s review:

(67) Love created me like itself.

I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss and I cannot die. I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today. I will worship no idols, nor raise my own self-concept to replace my Self. I am in the likeness of my Creator. Love created me like itself.

You might find these specific forms helpful in applying the idea:

Let me not see an illusion of myself in this. As I look on this, let me remember my Creator. 
My Creator did not create this as I see it.

(68) Love holds no grievances.

Grievances are completely alien to love. Grievances attack love and keep its light obscure. If I hold grievances I am attacking love, and therefore attacking my Self. My Self thus becomes alien to me. I am determined not to attack my Self today, so that I can remember Who I am.

These specific forms for applying this idea would be helpful:

This is no justification for denying my Self. I will not use this to attack love. 
Let this not tempt me to attack myself.

 

Journal

Just the titles to these two lessons tells the whole story. I am like God and God holds no grievances, so, if I am holding a grievance I am acting unlike myself and therefore I will not recognize myself. My grievances obscure my true nature from me. God is eternal and if I believe anything that is not eternally true, I am in error and need to correct that error.

One day, I realized that I had a cold. My first thought at the time was that my granddaughter was at my house and she had a cold and I wiped her nose. As I did so, I had the thought that I could get this cold from her. This is a thought that is not true unless I believe it is true. It is not eternally true because it is a body thing and bodies are not eternal.

My Creator did not create this as I see it.

 

Regina’s Tips

We are practicing true compassion when we dedicate our lives to the pursuit of truth realization. This is because the ego thought system is the cause of all forms of suffering.

My Thoughts

I fully accept that no matter how strong my compassion is for the world, I can do little to help if I work from within the world. However, if I dedicate myself to awakening, I will help end all suffering. This is why Jesus tells us that our only function is to accept the Atonement for ourselves. When I see the effect of believing untrue thoughts and I remind myself that my Creator did not create this as I see it, I am helping to undo the ego and to end all forms of suffering. Another thing I tell myself: “Nothing can replace God. I am willing to accept only the eternal.”

Past Entries

I am an aspect of my Creator

In the past when I read things like this, “I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss and I cannot die, I am not a body” I would immediately compare this statement to my life and of course they were not congruent. I would think of the words as affirmations, or at best, goals I was working toward. Now I see this differently.

Those words are the absolute truth. What I seem to be experiencing are the effects of the separation belief. These effects are a veil drawn over the truth. They hide the truth, but do not change it. I am not the veil. This is not a lesson to show me a better Myron, but to show me I am not Myron. I am not one who suffers and dies. I am not that. I am no longer looking at the life of Myron and thinking, “my life” and when I do, sooner or later, I remember this is not true. I am detaching from the false “I” thought, and remembering the truth.

We have made the world appear and feel so real. This is both an affirmation of the power of our mind, and at the same time, it can make it feel hard to let go of our very realistic illusion. For a long time I have watched my mind vigilantly and I have practiced letting go of many of the dark thoughts I found there. This is forgiveness and I have accepted the Atonement many times for many thoughts.

Now I am focused on fully accepting that there is nothing to forgive and nothing to atone for. This is the next step in a natural progression toward awakening. All I am doing is reminding myself of the truth when I occasionally forget who I am. I am reminding myself that my Creator did not create this as I see it and so I must be seeing wrong. It is not hard to do this and I am happy to do the work. John Mark Stroud expressed this as learning to master my choice. I’m happy for the opportunity. It doesn’t feel bad if stuff comes up, I just feel grateful to once again realize that it is only an illusion.

The bottom line on grievances is that there is never a time when I can justify a grievance, nor do I want to. No matter what the appearance and how much it seems that someone is guilty, this is not true. First, everyone is innocent because that is how we were created and we cannot undo what God did no matter how elaborate our illusion. Secondly, how can I blame anyone for anything in my life when I remember that this is my story? It is an out-picturing of my own thoughts and beliefs.

A headache is a grievance.

Grievances hide the truth of my being from me and I am not interested in maintaining the illusion anymore. I still feel the attraction to blame at times, and I still feel guilty at times. But I use each instance as an opportunity to remember that I no longer desire guilt in any form. It is an old habit based on a problem that has been solved. I will deny guilt in all its forms as often and for as long as I need to do so. Eventually, maybe even today, I will witness it disappear from my mind.

Here is something that happened to me last year that describes a different kind of grievance. One night I got a terrible headache that lasted all night long and into this morning. That is a grievance. I felt tempted by the headache, and I saw all the advantages the ego presented to encourage me to keep the headache. They flashed through my mind one after another. For instance, I thought that I might stay in the hotel rather than going to work, and that had some appeal.

I thought about how hard I work and how unappreciated I am and that had some appeal. I saw the thought that I will never overcome the desire to suffer, and that made me want to just give into the headache and all the ills of the world. I thought about all the work I needed to do and how this headache would make the work very hard if not impossible and I felt like a helpless victim, and that has its own appeal. I felt the temptation to think about it and figure out what triggered the headache as if it could be something in the world that did it.

All those ego thoughts were in my mind, but that was not all that was in my mind. The truth was there, too, and I remembered that pain is a way of denying God.  Then I remembered that my one problem had been solved. It is not necessary for me to make these images of various problems anymore. They are no longer valid now that my one problem is not valid. I felt grateful that I am waking up. Now I seldom get headaches and when I do, they fade away without me doing anything about them. My experience is that once I face an illusion head on, accept that it came from my own mind and then choose against it, most of the time I have trouble believing in it even when it tries to return.