Lesson 85

Lesson 85

Today’s review will cover these ideas:

(69) My grievances hide the light of the world in me.

My grievances show me what is not there, and hide from me what I would see. Recognizing this, what do I want my grievances for? They keep me in darkness and hide the light. Grievances and light cannot go together, but light and vision must be joined for me to see. To see, I must lay grievances aside. I want to see, and this will be the means by which I will succeed.

Specific applications for this idea might be made in these forms:

Let me not use this as a block to sight. The light of the world will shine all this away. 
I have no need for this. I want to see.

(70) My salvation comes from me.

Today I will recognize where my salvation is. It is in me because its Source is there. It has not left its Source, and so it cannot have left my mind. I will not look for it outside myself. It is not found outside and then brought in. But from within me it will reach beyond, and everything I see will but reflect the light that shines in me and in itself.

These forms of the idea are suitable for more specific applications:

Let this not tempt me to look away from me for my salvation.
I will not let this interfere with my awareness of the Source of my salvation. 
This has no power to remove salvation from me.

 

Journal

Obviously, if it is my grievances that hide the light of the world in me, then it is from me that my salvation comes. This lesson is meant to remind me that there is nothing outside my mind that can save me. How could it? Anything I perceive as outside me is just an image of what is in my mind. Images cannot save me. Images are idols and idols are without power.

This is the paragraph that interested me this morning.

“Today I will recognize where my salvation is. It is in me because its Source is there. It has not left its Source, and so it cannot have left my mind. I will not look for it outside myself. It is not found outside and then brought in. But from within me it will reach beyond, and everything I see will but reflect the light that shines in me and in itself.”

We are told that our salvation has not left its Source. What is its Source? It is our Creator and is in the form of His Voice or the Holy Spirit. If I said this in non-religious terms, I would call it Love or Truth. Whatever we decide to call it, it is in me because God is in me or to say it another way, I am in God. We are not separable, God and I. The point is, my salvation is always available to me because it is in me.

I know this is true and yet, it is a habit of many lifetimes to look outward for salvation and so I find myself doing it in many little ways. When I am worried about my son, I call him to reassure myself that he’s ok. When I am sick, I take medicine to mask the symptoms. When I am short on money, I look for ways to get more money or ways to spend less. Because I am also aware that these efforts to manipulate my projections are not the answer, I also turn to the Holy Spirit to show me another way. This is looking in the right direction and will purify my mind.

Jesus says that “from within me it will reach beyond, and everything I see will but reflect the light that shines in me and in itself.” I gather from that statement that as my mind is purified, my projections will reflect this purity. It will do so in either in the quality of the projections or in my perception of the projections, probably both at different times and different ways. This has been my experience.

Regina’s Tips 

What we need to notice about this is that the body-mind learns to crave what we give it, so we have to GIVE IT in order for the body-mind to begin to crave it.

That could mean that in the beginning there isn’t much motivation to practice. However, in order to create the motivation to practice, we need to practice anyway. It reminds me of an Awakening Together Daily Quote from last week:

“Each step may seem to take forever, but no matter how uninspired you feel, continue to follow your practice schedule precisely and consistently. This is how we can use our greatest enemy, habit, against itself.”
~ Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

My Thoughts

I have seen that this is true. I had to get over the hump of old habit to form a new one, but now my spiritual practice is something I crave like a smoker craves a cigarette. Regina says that this could be called the positive use of craving. All I know is that it brings me such peace to begin my day with God, and I look forward to using my spiritual practice throughout the day. I think it started as a way to escape the torment of living outside grace, but now it is motivated by the pure joy of it.

 

Past Entries
This review is continuing a discussion about grievances. My grievances keep me in darkness and block the light. If I want to see, I must give up my grievances. There is a part of my mind that has clung to grievances as if they were my savior, but there is a part that wants light. As I have listened to Jesus instead of to the ego, I have strengthened the part of my mind that is willing to trade specialness for holiness.

My message from Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit: There is a need to expand your thinking about grievances because grievances are what block the light in your mind. You work with the specific grievances you see in your life and you begin to understand they are all the same, simply dressed up to look different. It was an ego strategy to keep you busy so you would be unaware of what the grievances are hiding. You know that you are starting to see the sameness. That is why you found Lesson 79 and 80 so useful; it helped you to recognize more fully the sameness of all problems.

My message to Holy Spirit
I am pretty excited about the shift that is occurring in my work with grievances. I have been handing over thought errors for a long time now, and have been fully convinced of the value in doing so, but when I first started, I was looking at each thought as if it were unrelated to the others. It felt like a job for hundreds of lifetimes. Thank you for helping me to see this differently.

From NTI
I was reading NTI (The Holy Spirit’s Interpretation of the New Testament) this morning and this is what I read about Light.

Have faith in your Father and look to your brother for the Light. It was your Father that placed it there with him, and so it is there, within your brother where it must be. John: 5

This passage helped me to see that if I am not seeing the Light in my brother then I must be hiding it with a grievance in my mind because the Light is there.

Broadening My Definition of Grievances
Over the years I have been journaling these lessons I have broadened my definition of grievances. I began by thinking of a grievance as a reaction to something someone did to me. For instance, I recognized I was holding a grievance against my son when I felt upset he had not called in a long time. I then expanded it to my reaction to situations.

An example of this is realizing I was holding a grievance against the situation that seemed to be causing my distress; I was upset that I was not being called. In both of those cases, I asked the Holy Spirit to correct my thinking and I realized it was not the person or the situation that caused my distress, but rather my thoughts about the person and situation that caused me to be upset. My mind returned to peace.

My understanding of grievances has broadened even more. I now understand that anything which blocks my awareness of Love’s presence in my mind can be called a grievance. The grief I experienced at my mother’s death was a grievance. By not blocking or resisting the grief, by simply allowing it to flow through me without obstruction, and through remembering to ask for healing as it came into my awareness, I began to experience clarity about this.

The sanity in my mind does not recognize death or loss. It sees that nothing changed except my choice of how to see my mom now. If I insist that she is only a body and a part of my story then I experience a sense of loss and I grieve. This is the source of my grievance.

That insane part of the mind that does not acknowledge eternity and oneness, has a grievance against my mother for leaving, and against the “something” that has taken my mother from me. It holds a grievance against “life” for being so cruel. The sane part of my mind knows this isn’t the truth, but for awhile it did not reign supreme and so I suffered grief.

Holy Spirit, thank you for showing me this. I want to say that I know this grievance is not the truth because I do know this, and yet I grieved, so obviously there was still the thought in my mind that I can and do suffer loss. In those cases where I have a grievance against life as defined by my beliefs, please heal my mind. Let me not use anything as a block to sight.

I am willing to give up all grievances. I have been mistaken that it has some value as a protective device. My grievance does not protect me or accord me control as I must have thought it did. I give you this mistaken thought and invite you to correct it. I want to see.

Complete the Release through Love

I choose to hold no grievance against anyone. If a grievance shows up in my mind, I choose not to entertain it and I let it go. I cannot think of a single good reason for keeping a grievance. I know that I can decide not to follow a thought that does not bring me peace. It is entirely my choice. Behind those dark thoughts is the Light that is God. I choose that Light. Sometimes it can feel hard to let it go but I always do, usually sooner than later.

I had a grievance against someone and I asked for help because I was having trouble releasing it. As I began to see the situation differently I felt more peaceful, but I sensed that something was still missing. I received a message to do more than simply let go of the grievance. To experience the joy that I want, I needed to not just forgive but to fully love, to invite this one into my heart, to envelope him in my holiness, to share the Love that is God and know myself as one with him.
Thank you, Jesus, my Brother. Yes, that is what was missing. Now it is complete. I like this Heart stuff.

Grievances Lead to Defensiveness

As I increased and expanded my understanding of grievances and my commitment to releasing them, no matter how big they seem to me or how small, I began to see how this relates to the lesson that tells me that in my defenselessness my safety lies. I see the many ways I defend myself and to defend myself brings fear into my life. I see that each time I defend myself it is because I was seeing a grievance. I remembered when I felt annoyed that a new employee couldn’t tell me something I needed to know. That was a grievance and my annoyance was my defense, and in defending, I was saying I am vulnerable and therefore have reason to fear.

Maybe I won’t get the information I need in time to finish this job, was my thought. From that idea flowed other thoughts that led to fear. With all those dark thoughts in my mind, I could not find the light. I felt anxious and afraid, and guilt was clogging the works so I couldn’t think straight. I stopped a moment and asked for a different way to see. I accepted the moment exactly as it was. I remembered that the peace of God is everything I want. I invited the light into my mind and in the light, all the dark thoughts were gone and I laughed at my “problem.”

I am Done with Grievances

I am finally done with grievances. I see they never have value no matter how they show up in the story. I see that they keep me in hell because they separate me from my brother. I remember that Jesus said that I cannot enter the presence of God if I attack His Son and so grievances keep me from the awareness of God. So, recently, I told the Holy Spirit that I was done with grievances and that I wanted them removed from my mind. And so the Holy Spirit began to show me the grievances that were there.

Good grief! I have done so much work with grievances that I thought there could not be many, but I see that the idea that grievances have some value is still very much a part of my mind, and so they keep showing up. But that’s OK. I am glad to see them because they are the last of the grievances. In looking at them, I see how they seemed to be valuable to me so that I can see the value was false.

For instance, yesterday I suddenly felt such rage against some political situations I had been reading about. I had been hiding that rage from myself by covering it up with “reasonable” thoughts. At first, I thought that I should stop reading about this subject, but avoidance is not healing. So, instead, I asked the Holy Spirit to help me see what I thought this rage was doing for me. I let my thoughts go and I saw that I was using the rage to fuel an argument that was meant to change minds, to get these obstinate people to see reason. This means I believed my rage could protect me and others. It cannot. It never does. Only love heals and it is healing our nation needs.

I felt the anger melt away as I realized that there is no value in the grievance I was holding. I felt my heart expand as I felt love extending to all those I had thought of as enemies. I felt peace and joy. I want very much to see the political climate change, but it will not change through anger and fear. Grievances will not bring the change I long to see reflected in the world. Grievances will only add to the turmoil and dissension. Love is what I want to see and so love is what I must give. I am done with grievances and this is the way I am clearing my mind of the last of them. I am letting the Holy Spirit show me where there is still some belief that I need them, and then removing them as I choose to let that belief go.