Lesson 285: “What is the Holy Spirit?”  “My holiness shines bright and clear today.”

This lesson says, “Today I wake with joy, expecting but the happy things of God to come to me.  I ask but them to come, and realize my invitation will be answered by the thoughts to which it has been sent by me.” 

We are learning to take responsibility- in the Course’s teaching- for what we think.  The Course makes the point that our thinking ends up projected out into our world, so we then see a reflection of the nature of our thinking in form before and around us.

The Course continues to remind us this with the intention to simply spur us on to take responsibility for them.  

We don’t have to to feel like this is a burden that we end up getting the reality in form of what we think in each moment.

This is a big deal because we are needing to learn to gently accept this reality about the Universe and not feel guilty or overburdened by what we see in the world. 

Sometimes the world seems like a scary place and we may think it is a real stretch to think that such an insane society at times is simply from our own mind’s inner workings being out-pictured into the world.

We can feel like this is too much of a charge to accept this and then make peace with it and act in a proactive way in the world, whatever that may be. 

The Holy Spirit shares with us in our inner prayer what prompts we are meant to notice about how to respond to what seems like insanity we see.

We are learning to take heart in the idea that we can have responsibility for what we see.   God does not want us to waste a moment of our time or energy getting overwhelmed by whatever pain or loss or disease or death we see.  We learn to not feel guilty for apparently being the one who created it.

We are learning to forgive this about ourselves. 

There will be plenty of times we see exterior images in the world as downright distressing.  We may have a very hard time accepting that we would cause ourselves to create this part of our reality to live.  We might think no one could truly be so cruel to themselves as we appear to be.  It seems far fetched we could arrange this reality in our minds and then have to live it and deal with it in the world.  We are asked to forgive ourselves.  There may be plenty of lessons that God wants us to absorb regarding that questionable scenario we see outside us.

God may have all kinds of crucial lessons for us or for other people. 

We all grow from our exchanges with each other.  We need to trust that God has a purpose.

When we are having a hard time in the world, we learn in the Course to grow our faith in our being in God’s perfect moment. 

We learn to take responsibility for what we see.  We must check in with our own minds no matter what we see.  Regardless of whether the world looks easy and fun and light or it seems like a burdensome mess we must still take notice and care that we as individuals are always the ones who can reach more deeply within our own hearts and minds.

We can be even more clear about what we want to have in our minds and also have reflected in the world. 

When we do the inner work of looking at what we are thinking, then we become engaged in the energy of the thinking that we are blessed and given all of God’s most precious gifts. 

The more we focus on this, the more it grows within us.

We learn in the Course to keep practicing making our own decision to choose God and God’s abundant gifts of Love and grace and ease. 

Also, they will be always gaining greater awareness in our minds.