This week I had a powerful insight into the content of my mind. I was still using my recent financial challenge to go as deep as possible into my mind’s thoughts. I wanted to have a deep shift in perception – I was asking for a miracle. I was not content to sweep the incident under the ego’s carpet and just learn how to function better in the world.
I knew my mistakes were not in the world. I knew no lasting solution could be found there. I knew financial freedom was not possible. I knew the only freedom was freedom of mind. What was happening in my mind? Did I really want to find out? Yes I truly did this time! I took Jesus’s hand as suggested in the Workbook lesson 70:
Since all illusions of salvation have failed you, surely you do not want to remain in the clouds, looking vainly for idols there, when you could so easily walk on into the light of real salvation. Try to pass the clouds by whatever means appeals to you. If it helps you, think of me holding your hand and leading you. And I assure you this will be no idol fantasy. W-70.9:1-4
The clouds in the passage are the body and the world, and the light is in our minds. Clearly the problem and the solution are in the mind.
First, it is obvious that decisions are of the mind, not of the body…The resistance to recognizing this is enormous, because the existence of the world as you perceive it depends on the body being the decision maker… sickness is of the mind, and has nothing to do with the body. What does this recognition “cost”? It costs the whole world you see, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind. M-5.II.1:4,7, 3:2-4
The context of the above passage from the Manual for Teachers is sickness and the context of my learning was money or poverty consciousness. Rewriting the above sentence with poverty rather than sickness: “poverty is of the mind, and nothing to do with the body”. I had projected my mind’s thoughts of spiritual poverty onto my body and then tried to remedy the problem on that level. Trying to solve the problem on the level of form is what our wrong mind wants, therefore distracting us from our mind and the True Solution. We often settle for the magic of the world but at some point the pain gets to much and we cry out in distress for another solution.
… the undoing process, which does not come from you, is nevertheless within you because God placed it there. Your part is merely to return your thinking to the point at which the error was made, and give it over to the Atonement in peace. T-5.VII.6:4-5
When I looked my thoughts of spiritual poverty with the help of Jesus or the miracle, I could see the consequences of my mind’s thinking on how I perceived the world. I experienced loss not because of the numbers on a trading report but because of the decision I had made in my mind. Looking calmly at my spiritual poverty, I understood that I believed that I had lost the treasure of God and the awareness of my True Identity. I believed I was lacking, lonely and separated.
Yet even as I was looking with Jesus at my wrong-minded thoughts I was undoing the separation. I experienced my Identity as a decision maker in my mind. I felt joy and freedom. I knew that the world would never be the same for me again. Knowing the power of my mind to choose released me from being a victim of the world. I knew I could now have an investments loss without perceiving it as a loss. Mind released from thoughts of poverty naturally accepts the thoughts of completeness, oneness, joy, peace and love. These right-minded thoughts may or may not be expressed in form, but that is not my responsibility or my concern. I only care about the decision I make in my mind.
Do you really believe you can plan for your safety and joy better than He can? You need be neither careful nor careless; you need merely cast your cares upon Him because He careth for you. T-5.VII.1:3-4