Gentle Healing Year 1 ~ Lesson 138

Lesson 138. Heaven is the decision I must make.

I remember being at a spiritual meeting and there were many who said they had very little experience with spiritual gatherings like the one being presented that evening. I remember, as well, watching one woman in particular. I knew she was really hearing what was being taught but she was in resistance. I knew exactly what this woman was going through because I had, had the same experience.

She had a pained look on her face. It said, “my world as I know it, is over. If I accept what is being said here, I am no longer calling the shots. My thinking is about to change and my world is going to be turned upside down.” This is the first step in learning that there is more to existence than the life I have been living. Suddenly the woman is confronted with ideas of giving up the way she has been thinking about herself and her world. There is a big shift coming and she knows it intuitively. “All of my beliefs are going to be challenged.”

Many of us at this point believe we are going to be asked to sacrifice or make a choice for spirituality over family and friends and possessions and, etc. But the truth is, we are being guided to experience differently as we let ourselves be undone. By letting go of the value we have placed on things of the world, we realize we have been seeking for happiness where it cannot be found. And with this realization, we can feel the impending death of the ego. For me, it took awhile to realize that what we have been learning is that peace of mind/heaven is available through the relinquishment of who we thought we were.

There is but one choice we have to make and that choice is made when we realize everything else is ridiculous folly, a waste of time. We–the ones of us in the Gentle Healing class together–have made this decision. We have looked at our thoughts and questioned our beliefs about everything and now we are ready to take the step that has always been available to us. We are ready for the direct experience of truth.

The practice we utilize for the direct experience of truth is Awareness watching Awareness. This is why awareness-watching-awareness is called the direct path. It is a practice that recognizes truth is now, and it chooses to give attention to truth now; attention ignores illusion and goes directly to truth.

A Course in Miracles is not the direct path. It says that itself in today’s lesson. It says, “But knowledge is beyond the goals we seek to teach within the framework of this course. Ours are teaching goals, to be attained through learning how to reach them, what they are, and what they offer you. Decisions are the outcome of your learning, …”

In other words, A Course in Miracles is like preparatory school. It helps prepare you to make the choice for truth. And that is the only purpose of learning, to prepare you. However, it is possible to go directly to being prepared without needing to learn volumes of information first.

As today’s lesson says, “Heaven is chosen consciously. The choice cannot be made until alternatives are accurately seen and understood. All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding, to be judged again, this time with Heaven’s help. And all mistakes in judgment that the mind had made before are open to correction, as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed, because their nothingness is recognized.”

That’s the purpose of inquiry, which we will go deeper into over the coming weeks. As we saw in last week’s reading of Inner Ramana’s s/Self-Inquiry, this is the two part process recommended there. We question our thinking to see its worthlessness and untruth. As we see that clearly, we are willing to let go of our thinking and choose only truth (aka Heaven).