19.03.06
The Lessons of the Holy Spirit (Feb 21, 1997)
Posted in Transcripts at 12:25 pm by miracles 
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A Talk by Linda and James Hale
- Introductory Reading
- Teaching and Learning
- Lesson 1 To Have, Give All To All.
- Lesson 2 To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It.
- Lesson 3: Be Vigilant Only for God and His Kingdom
Please note that these are the notes we used in our presentation, thus they do not read as if they were written as an article. Also the quotes we used in the presentation are, in the main, only given by their reference in the second edition. Please look these up as they are quite relevant.
Introductory Reading
I share with God the knowledge of the value He puts upon you. My devotion to you is of Him, being born of my knowledge of myself and Him. We cannot be separated. Whom God has joined cannot be separated, and God has joined all His Sons with Himself. Can you be separated from your life and your being? The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge of where you are always, and what you are forever. It is a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed. Truth can only be experienced. It cannot be described and it cannot be explained. I can make you aware of the conditions of truth, but the experience is of God. Together we can meet its conditions, but truth will dawn upon you of itself.
T-8.VI.9.
Teaching and Learning.
The Course teaches that everyone teaches and teaches all the time. In that there is no choice. The core of what we are teaching and therefore learning is what we are.
see M-in.2. and T-6.III.1:8-10, 2:1-3
The World’s curriculum
Everyone who follows the world’s curriculum, and everyone here does follow it until he changes his mind, teaches solely to convince himself that he is what he is not. M-in.4:4
The world’s curriculum is outlined quite graphically in the Law’s of Chaos. In the context of out talk here we could summarise them as follows.
We have by getting (taking)
In believing we are separated from wholeness, love and truth we experience ourselves as fragmented, incomplete and lacking. This is intolerable and we are therefore compelled to constantly seek outside ourselves for the completion we lack. This completion, this sense of being whole is dependant on us feeling special. We seek to extract or take that specialness from others overtly and covertly in the associations we form.
We maintain separation by attack
In taking from others we believe that they will take from us and given that we have stolen in the first place we feel this attack warranted. Thus we need to defend ourselves against attack from them. The ego counsels that the best form of defence is itself attack and thus we are constantly engaged in a cycle of attack - defence - attack. This is in effect our replaying over and over again our initial thought of separation or “detour into fear” and our turning to the ego or the belief that the separation actually happened. The guilt of this is unbearable and hidden by the very mechanism that seeks to alleviate it. By this device we can maintain a sense of being apparently separate without the terrible burden of guilt or responsibility. We have placed the guilt on another.
We are vigilant for the ego and guilt.
We therefore are invested in seeing this guilt “outside” us in order to retain some semblance of innocence and lovability. Thus presenting a “face of innocence” to the world is dependant on seeing something “outside” as the villain. Our vigilance in this is dramatically described as one of our obstacles to peace…
see T-19.IV.A.12.
In answer to these mechanisms or lessons of the ego, God’s Teacher offers His lessons.
Lesson 1 To Have, Give All To All.
Anything that is bound by time, has a beginning and an end, is not of truth or real. Thus the body is not real, nor indeed our reality. The lessons of the Holy Spirit rest upon the very first principle of miracles; “There is no order of difficulty in miracles.” T-1.I.1:1 There is no exception to this and it is to this truth we are being led. It is the opposite to the ego’s first “law” that the truth is different for everyone. A “law” of inequality between God’s children. All God’s creations are equal, thus…”only one equal gift can be offered to the equal Sons of God, and that is full appreciation.” T-6.V.A.4:7
Our truth is a state where having and being are synonymous. This is a state in which it is recognised that the world is one of ideas, that we truly are only Thoughts of God or spirit.
Thoughts increase by being given away.
The more who believe in them the stronger they become.
Everything is an idea.
How, then, can giving and losing be associated? T-5.I.2:2-5
Thoughts can only be strengthened by giving them away. A state we no longer remember or believe. Instead we have assumed the ego’s counsel, believing that having rests on getting. Another way of proving we are incomplete and can only be complete or be, by taking.
The first lesson of the Holy Spirit is thus a reversal of this thought of lack and loss. It is a beginning step, just a beginning. This is the only step that we need actually choose for we have “unknowingly” chosen otherwise. We need to be willing to turn in the direction of truth or to at least be open to the possibility that there is another way. God, being Love, will never force His Will upon us. To do so would be entirely antithetical to the spirit of love or truth.
There is another very important reason why it is we have to freely turn in the direction of truth. One of the primary lessons of the Holy Spirit is that we are co-creators with God and that our fulfilment can only be found in resuming our true function. The dawning of the awareness of the power inherent in our true nature and our basic desire to remember it would hardly be served by blindly forcing the truth upon us. We need to learn that we have the readiness and the power to awaken ourselves. As always in the Course the means and the end of the teaching are entirely consistent and unified.
see T-8.VIII.8:7-8 and T-2.VII.1:5-6 and T-6.V.A.6: 3
In our belief that we are a body we have identified wholly with the ego’s juncture that we are incomplete. We need food, shelter, company etc. Our body is seen and used simply and solely as a getting mechanism. To have, give all to all, is the beginning step in the reversal of this misthought. A beginning of using the body, not to get, but to communicate. A communication, not of lack, but abundance. A demonstration of the ineffable eternity of spirit. We have begun to question the idea that we need to look outside to find what we desire. We are also beginning to question the “truth” of attacking as a way to find.
You could say it start’s the moment you don’t see your interests as separate from another’s. [See M-1.1]
At this stage in our journey we recognise to some extent the need for a new thought system and are somewhat open to learning one. We have not as yet however seen the valuelessness of our old thought system. We are thus not willing to give it up entirely. This means, in effect, that we have two thought systems in our mind which are completely opposite. Taking this step is invariably associated with conflict because of this. Where you once seemingly heard only one voice that in itself brought you conflict you have now accepted, albeit tentatively, that there is another way that has no possible reconciliation with your previous counsel. It seems as if you have introduced yet another split in your already fragmented mind. This is necessary in that it is only by seeing this split that you can eventually see the unreality of what has now begun to appear split off. Without seeing the split a meaningful choice cannot be made, and a meaningful choice is the direction of these lessons.
Some stay at this stage for a very long time because there is the unwillingness to take the next inevitable step out of conflict. - relinquishing the old thought system in favour of the new. The Course reassures us however that once that first step is taken we will be helped to take the second.
“Once they haver chosen what they cannot complete alone they are no longer alone.” T-6.V.A.6:9
Even though we are experiencing and teaching conflict there are moments of peace. It is these moments, these holy instants, that awaken our desire for peace. And thus the Holy Spirit presents His second lesson…
Lesson 2 To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It.
The first lesson introduced the idea that there are two thought systems and that if we share a thought system we are strengthening it. Conversely if we do not share it we are weakening it. We also began to learn that only love and peace can in truth be shared or communicated — anything which contains even a hint of fear must promote attack.
see T-6.V.A.5:6-10
The first step represented the beginning of the thought reversal. During the second step or phase of learning, we are learning to positively affirm or claim what we want–the communication or joining inherent in the state of peace. In order to do this, alternatives must have been considered, and one has been deemed to be more desirable. This step is akin to the “period of sorting out” described in the development of trust section in The Characteristics of God’s Teachers, Chapter 4 of the Manual for Teachers. Once something has been deemed valueless relinquishment of it must necessarily follow.
The student, however, is not yet at a stage in which conflict has disappeared because the “gifts” of the ego’s thought system still seem to offer something. They still have an allure. In other words the valueless has not as yet been fully seen as valueless. As it poetically describes in the “Two Pictures” section of the text, we are so mesmerised by the heavy, elaborate, jewel-laden frame of the ego’s thought-system, that we forget to look at it’s picture–the nothingness of the body, and therefore death.
The Course speaks of us as being little children who are captivated by the toys and trinkets we have made. We animate the toys in our mind and we give value to our trinkets. In learning the Holy Spirit’s lessons we are developing the wisdom to let go of childish things once and for all, and assume our true stature and magnitude as the Sons of God.
Until we reach that stage we must necessarily feel conflicted and as though we are being called to sacrifice something of value.
see M-4.I.A.5
In the beginning we need to have sufficient trust and faith to practise what we do not understand. The first lesson is in a way the hardest one to learn for… “Still strongly aware of the ego in yourself, and responding primarily to the ego in others, you are being taught to react to both as if what you do believe is not true.” T-6.V.B.3:10
The whole learning process can be seen as one of turning away from the forms of the world to provide for our apparent lacks and needs and instead directing our attention back to our mind. We are moving towards the centre of our thought system where the only fundamental [and in fact the only] change can occur.
see T-6.V.B.2:5
With our motivation, the desire for truth, the means for its expression will inevitably follow. Those means will involve forgiveness and joining.
As the significance of this lesson is learned more deeply and generalised more consistently the student begins to see that the alternatives are not simply to be defined as what is more or less desirable. Rather it becomes increasingly clear the choice is between sanity and insanity.
see T-6.V.B.6.
The student is now ready to see that given that the fundamental premise of the ego’s thought system is based upon a lie about what we are it is imperative that its voice not be followed. The need for vigilance against the ego with all its guises becomes apparent.
While the first step seems to increase conflict and the second may still entail conflict to some extent, this step calls for consistent vigilance against it. I have already told you that you can be as vigilant against the ego as for it. This lesson teaches not only that you can be, but that you must be. T-6.V.C.4:1-3
Lesson 3: Be Vigilant Only for God and His Kingdom.
Only through consistent application of the lessons of the Holy Spirit is the difference between the vagaries of the ego and the joy engendered by the Holy Spirit recognised. The ego’s vagaries are due to the ego’s flawed and inconsistent view of what we are whereas the joy of the Holy Spirit come from the constancy of the His knowledge of the truth of what we are.
We are engaged in a process of giving up the ego’s judgement, something we were never able to do in any case, to do to make way for the unifying judgement of the Holy Spirit. In releasing our mind from judgement we learn to perceive without judgement, “to teach without judgment, and therefore to learn to be without judgment.” T-6.V.C.2:4
see T-28.II.9:3
As mentioned before, we are arriving at a state of mind in which we can begin to make a real or meaningful choice. We are returning to our mind [cause] its true function [causation] rather than believing it is determined [an effect] of what is outside of us. We are learning to no longer project , but rather extend. [see T-6.V.C.2:5]
Be Vigilant Only for God and His Kingdom.
The teaching and learning of peace as expressed in the second step has been transformed by the third step…previously we were teaching ourselves to believe in peace. Now we are teaching peace BECAUSE we believe it and because we believe it we desire it.
We are now asked to be no longer vigilant for the ego but for God, and thus against the ego.
Being vigilant for God and the Truth is being vigilant against the ego and illusion.
Recall T-6.V.C.4:3-4
In practice this would be experienced as being vigilant for when you are not experiencing peace. Peace or its absence is recognised increasingly as a state of mind, not as a result of what is “out there”. We are thus asked to be vigilant against the ego.
see T-6.V.C.4:5
We have come to a branch in the road. We can however delay our choice here for a long time. Up until this point we have merely been procrastinating about making this decision. The decision in itself is neither difficult nor the problem, the procrastination is. How many times have we come to this point only to wander off again. Yet it is at this point that we can realise that even wandering off was nothing as what leads nowhere cannot take you away from where you are in truth. We still think we can choose wrongly and so we think that to not choose is a choice. We have not realised that to not choose is no choice at all and the only choice we can actually make is the only choice there is. Only the first steps along this path seem hard, for once we realise this choice has been made, we also realise that there was no real choice at all.
This paradox of choosing what is choiceless is beautifully captured in…
You cannot go beyond belief until you believe fully. T-6.V.C.7:7
The third step is needed for the protection of our mind or our awareness of truth. The truth of what we are does not need protection because nothing real can be threatened. The temptation we need to be vigilant against is the belief that it can be. Each doubt that enters our mind is a belief in our expulsion from the Kingdom. For in doubting our place in the Kingdom we have believed we are no longer in it.
see T-6.V.C.10:1
In realising the equality of the sonship we understand the necessity to teach without exception in order to learn that there are no exceptions. There is no order of difficulty in miracles and the truth is the same for everyone.
Our vigilance against these doubts is an indication of our willingness to be led by the Holy Spirit and our desire to be guided by Him. It is a sign of disbelief in our fear of Him, and ultimately the truth of what we are.
Whereas before all our effort was directed to upholding the false we now turn it against it thus cancelling out the need for any effort by calling upon … “the being which you both have and are.” T-6.V.C.10:7
In order to awaken to wholeness we need to practice the awareness of wholeness.
We need to teach it in order to learn it.
We must be vigilant only for truth.
The Course’s curriculum ends at this point. Beyond this is beyond learning or teaching.
We at last allow God to take that final step in our recognition that we are indeed one with Him.
This has been a journey without distance to a place we never left.
Linda & James Hale
“Portions from A Course in Miracles Copyright © 1975, 1985, 1992 reprinted by permission of the Foundation for Inner Peace, Inc. The ideas represented herein are the personal interpretation of the authors and are not necessarily endorsed by the copyright holder.”