Thoughts with Gayle: Lesson 83

Morning!

I was reading from Ken’s Journey through the WB last night before going to bed and want to share what he wrote as we review Lesson 65, My only function is the one God gave me:

“Our function is to forgive, the only right-minded reason for being in the world.  We are not here to save it, make a lot of money, raise a happy family, have a healthy body, or live to be a hundred and fifty years.  Remembering this will remove conflict, because believing our function is external with inevitably conflict with out internal function of realizing that nothing external is important; only the change of thinking brought abut by the change of teachers.

Conflict results as well from wanting to study this course and return home, at the same time yearning to be its great teacher, or, seemingly more humbly, its devoted student, while still desiring the gifts of specialness: money, power, and love.  In these cases we regard an external goal as important – if not more so – than the internal one, setting up the conflict that was the ego’s goal from the beginning.  Yet this course will end conflict, not exacerbate it, and the only right-minded purpose of the external world, once we have made it, is for it to be the mirror that shows the choice we made internally.”

He then quotes from T-24.VI.4:1-4 prefacing the quote with:

“Only then can our minds – the true source of conflict – be healed, as the following passage explains:

“”Forget not that the healing of God’s Son is all the world is for.  That is the only purpose the Holy Spirit sees in it, and thus the only one it has.  Until you see the healing of the Son as all you wish to be accomplished by the world, by time and all appearances, you will not know the Father nor yourself.  For you will use the world for what is not its purpose, and will not escape its laws of violence and death.””

OK and now for a few thoughts on review of Lesson 66, My happiness and my function are one, the quote that follows is his commentary on the first two suggested forms of application for this lesson:

“As in the previous lesson, we are asked to recognize that whatever form of upset confronts us, it has no power the change the happiness that forgiveness brings.  Happiness comes from the mind’s decision, and no power in the world can take that from us.  Only our decision can, and unfortunately has done so.

We see again and again in these applications how Jesus asks us to take these relatively abstract ideas and apply them in our diurnal situations.  That is mandatory if we are going to learn this course, which is not really an intellectual process.  While intellectually learning its message is important – that is the purpose of the text, after all – if we do not apply the teachings, they mean nothing.  Therefore, the emphasis of these lessons is to have us go through our day as we normally would, but the moment something disturbs our peace or makes us excited, to realize this can have no effect on our happiness and function, which are within.  We have merely covered them with illusions, which have no effect on the truth.”

Ken’s emphasis on practical application to everything is the reason why I have affiliated myself with this ministry, Revs. Deb and Paul and all of you.  I find I am far less afraid of just looking at the darkness in my mind, the lack of forgiveness and/or my dependence on the valueless, my own repertoire of idols, if you will, with help from the Holy Spirit who leads me to the light and holiness which is what we all are.

What Ken wrote was very thought-provoking for me.  I may write a separate post about my epiphanies if I am guided to do so.

I hope that whomever may read this is able to find his perspective at least interesting enough to stimulate your own thoughts and perceptions about forgiveness and happiness and the way in which they are intrinsically linked.

Love to all,

Gayle