Sunday, October 11, 2015
Lesson 284: “What is the Holy Spirit?” “I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt.”
We have to accept that sometimes or even maybe often we may be in the habit of experiencing inner conflict. Our egos are quick to judge and complain about each minute little detail of what is happening outwardly. As well we have the seemingly constant battle within to find some way to a sense of quiet and peace. We have secret wars raging within a lot of the time. Our ego manages to find something wrong about everything we see. We get the barrage of insults from our overactive ego’s thinking. It turns out that our thoughts are actually hurting us when we aren’t attending to them enough to keep track of when they are off base.
When our thoughts are in conflict with God’s reality which is peace, then we are in inner conflict. When we aren’t aligned with God and aligned within ourselves, then we necessarily feel painful thoughts.
The deal is that we are always hearing thoughts that make us miserable. We are constantly at the mercy of our insane ego that uses every waking breath to torture us emotionally and spiritually. This means that we are the ones who suffer because we get this onslaught of thoughts that give us the experience of feeling terrible. We have to forgive the fact that our thoughts are often the culprit that is responsible for making us feel unhappy and lacking peace.
Our thoughts are simply tools in the world. Lots of people get used to believing our thoughts are set because they may seem to partly form the foundation of our belief system. We so very often believe all through our lives that this is not alterable. We often then feel disempowered and in that energy we often end up failing to do anything to change our thoughts because we feel like there is simply no way to do that. We start to stop showing up with any sense of willingness to redirect our thinking style because we assume this is already predetermined from whatever forces have shaped us initially or up to that point.
This is why Jesus teaches us in the Course that our thinking is in fact what we most need to change. And the reality is that we can change our thoughts. We don’t have to have shame for living in the nightmare of our thought illusions and thus feel guilty and paralyzed around motivating ourselves to move our old outgrown habits of thinking what makes us unhappy.
The Course says we absolutely can change our thinking. We need to forgive the fact that our thinking is insane and not with God. But then we must understand that there is nothing else wrong with our capacity to reshape our mental perspective. All we have to do is acknowledge that this is an insane and outdated fantasy that got us off beam. We need to simply see it for what it is. Then we can simply understand that we must have faith that God is happy to help us to change our thinking. Also, it is simple because it is simply returning to the Self we live with God, and that is never anything but a shift in perception. This is completely in the realm of what we can do, and with God’s help whenever we need support. This is why we can simply leave behind any shame and guilt about not having done it earlier.
Jesus says that all we have to do is want to be free from our own limiting thoughts that in fact hurt us. When we are not thinking in conjunction with God, then we end up with the experience of thoughts that hurt. All we have to do is remember that we can easily change them when we simply remember we have no limitation in God’s perfect Plan. We are freed by this knowledge.