Hi there,
I thought it most loving to share this morning the reference Ken Wapnick made in Absence from Felicity on Helen Schucman’s conversation with Jesus, here you go in its entirety as he writes:
“ This important teaching (he was referencing a passage he shared from The Song of Prayer supplement at this point) was understood in a personal message to Helen, correcting her tendency to ask for specific words to say to a person in trouble. Here is what Jesus told his scribe:
“Remember you need nothing, but you have an endless store of loving gifts to give. But teach his lesson only to yourself. Your brother will not learn it from your words or from the judgments you have laid on him. You need not even speak a word to him. You cannot ask, “What shall I say to him?” and hear God’s answer. Rather ask instead, “help me to see this brother through the eyes of truth and not judgment,” and the help of God and all His angels will respond.”
He further writes:
“We shall return again and again to this vital point, for it points the way beyond the ego’s spiritual specialness, one of its greatest defense against the spiritual truths found in ACIM and many other spiritualities.”
As he concludes his perspective on Lesson 47, two lessons ago, “God is the strength in which I trust”, he refers to the passage in the Text that begins with “No one can escape from illusions unless he looks at them, for not looking is the way they are protected. There is no need to shrink from illusions, for they cannot be dangerous…”, etc. (T.-11.V.1:-2:3, 8-9.
Thus we are given both sides of the split mind: the truth within, as well as instruction for the journey to that truth, which entails looking at the ego’s weakness.”
He continues with:
“One more point. Looking at the ego is not enough if you do not also move beyond it to the strength of Christ. Half the lesson is not the whole. This thought is similar to the passage in the text on healing being of the mind, not the body, the removal of physical symptoms is not the issue”:
“Yet half the lesson will not teach the whole. The miracle is useless if you learn but that the body can be healed, for this is not the lesson it was sent to teach. The lesson is the mind was sick that thought the body could be sick; projecting out is guilt caused nothing, and had no effects.” (T-28.II.11:5-7).
“Thus, “letting go of the ego” means nothing. Moreover, it is not really letting go if ones does not identify at the same time with the gentle, defenseless, and loving strength of Christ, inherent in which is the remembrance of the Oneness of God’s Son.”
OK, so…even though my goal is to live the Course as Jesus recommends to Helen in the example above, I cannot get there until I look within and ask for help in releasing the sense of sin, deep and unconscious, I have and project onto everyone and everything including God, really, only God. Holding grievances is an attack of God is a future lesson, not sure if I got that right, doesn’t matter.
Ah…and Ken admonishes us to never skip steps. So what if we’re on the bottom rung of the ladder to our true Home which we never left anyhow. We are all spiritual babies.
Can I accept that? Ah, must guard against spiritual specialness, I have something everyone else doesn’t have, that makes me spiritually superior because I am oh, so diligent in studying the Course.
Hogwash.
Each moment and every hour and every day, I choose the Holy Spirit or the ego. Today’s lesson is so elegant as this decision, this power to choose is all that we have and we can choose anytime to bask in the peace of God if, in fact, it is important to us.
It sure is to me.
Happy practicing today!
Love,
Gayle
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