I did not expect to find God in prison. I did not go into prison to find God. In the beginning I don’t know what I felt about God. The thought of God rarely crossed my mind. I volunteered to teach a personal development program in prison to “prove” my skills and abilities as a coach at “changing” behavior. There was the thought to help others while at the same time I remember thinking, “This is great, I can practice my skills at changing people and people will be impressed that I went into prison,” at the back of my mind. Yet the Holy Spirit found a way to enter my mind, to guide me, to show me another way past this false edifice of proving myself to win love and approval. He helped open my eyes so that I could see past the illusion of darkness within myself and others to experience a deep abiding love that is ever present. I experienced over and over the power of light to shine through the darkness of fear and reveal it as untrue. This is the path to forgiveness and peace.
After several years of coaching in prisons I started studying A Course in Miracles, and this brought deeper recognition of what is true, that we are love and light, and that there is no darkness that can stand to this light. Jesus shared in the Course that we are one in Light and Love and this grows in my awareness each day. I can only bear witness in my experience and offer this as testament by request of the Holy Spirit for the healing of my mind. Healing the mind through forgiveness is to perceive that there is no darkness, only light.
Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness, and become glad. This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them, and let God Himself go out into them and through them. A Course in Miracles, T-5. I. 1.
What is precious is there is nothing exclusive about this experience of love. It is available to everyone and that is the most joyful news of all to share. A Course in Miracles is one of many teachings available for each and every one of us to experience the grace of our shared true nature. We have merely to have the desire and the openness to allow the truth of our being to be revealed.
I resisted the inspiration to write this blog. I did not want to talk about Jesus, or at least the concept I had of Jesus. Jesus meant fear to me, because of what I thought was the cruel way in which a teacher of love and gentle savior was killed. Most images in my mind were of looking up at him hanging on a cross in church, the reminder of the belief in the mind that some price must be paid for salvation. Even though I’ve studied the Course for years, I shared my experiences with very few of those around me, fearing “what would they – friends, family, professional colleagues – think of me?” The concept “Jesus freak” played in my mind. Little did I know the thousands of ways in every day I was crucifying myself through my own thoughts of a separate self. “What would they think of me?” is just one thought of many that created a false sense of fear that I could be “rejected” and thus not feel love. Those judgments of myself and others are the basis for all suffering and ultimately the denial of the truth of what God created. This is an egoic self inflicted punishment that is impossible for a loving God to conceive for his precious Son.
God was just a group of ideas in my mind of the bearded guy on the throne keeping track of right and wrong. It was like a mean version of Santa Claus, making a list and checking it twice before gifts could be bestowed. That was the expression of a mind that had chosen fear over love. Now I appreciate that writing this blog is an expression of the acceptance of the light within and gratitude for the one Christ mind that shines within us all. Jesus says gratitude to a brother is the gateway to Heaven, and truly the gratitude I feel toward my brothers and sisters who have shown me the way into light beyond the prison of my egoic thought system is beyond expression.
As I started writing the thought came to mind, “No one will believe love can be found in prison.” Made up ideas about how I might be judged for sharing these beliefs and experiences arose in mind. Then the realization came that this is the same challenge Jesus is referring to in the Course in Miracles when he suggests that we can find love and freedom from the prison of suffering of the world; the prison of our belief system about the world. I didn’t believe that abiding love, peace and joy can be found in daily experience, because of the prison of judgments I accepted. There have been many concepts I have had about myself and others that have kept me in a prison of pain and suffering. The purpose of expression is to offer all self judgment to the Holy Spirit for reinterpretation in order to be free of the prison of beliefs in the ego and separation. And as misinterpretations fade away beauty and light fills the mind.
In the Course Jesus invites us to experience the joy of the ever present now. The focus of the course is mind training. Training our minds so that we are open to direct personal experience of what is true- we are love. This experience occurs when we follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit to learn to see past what is false so ever present love rises fully into awareness. The Course emphasizes the power of watching our minds for the judgments we make about what is happening in the world so that we can learn what leads us to joy and peace of mind or what decisions we make in our minds that lead to pain and unhappiness.
Our greatest power is that we can choose to be in a state of peace or choose differently and remain in fear. In order to “take back our minds” or be “right minded” as is suggested in A Course in Miracles we have to first notice the thoughts and judgments that are causing fear. Thankfully, as the Course says, there is always an opportunity to choose again with Spirit’s interpretation of the meaning of our thoughts; the interpretation of a loving God. We have the power to choose peace of mind through seeing no error with what we find in present experience. In accepting forgiveness right now love can be recognized. In this freedom from judgment grace arises.
The Course teaches the power of stepping forward together to join in order to help each other to recognize and honor the truth of light and love in our minds. We are made in light and to Join in Light is the path to freedom and joy together. Our greatest fear is that we are separate and alone from that which created us and joining together to remember our light is an antidote described by Jesus in the Course. Placing darkness (beliefs and fears) in this shared light provides a direct experience that the darkness of fear perceived through the ego sense of separate self is untrue. There is tremendous resistance to the concept of joining as belief in thoughts of separation that float through our minds maintains the habit of a sense of individual or personal identity. To join is to celebrate what is already joined as One Christ mind and to experience what Jesus called the peace that surpasses understanding.
This website and blog is dedicated to joining in celebration of the One. I extend my open hands to all to join in this light so that we may together shine away any illusion of darkness to reveal the truth of the glory of what God has made.
You who hold your brother’s hand also hold mine, for when you joined each other you were not alone. Do you believe that I would leave you in the darkness that you agreed to leave with me? In your relationship is this world’s light. And fear must disappear before you now.” (A Course in Miracles, T-18. III.4)
With love and gratitude,
Cay
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