We will be reading and reflecting on this teaching, "What is the Holy Spirit?" every day for the next ten days in conjunction with our daily Lessons. The Holy Spirit is the aspect of God's Love taken into the dream so He is now in our right minds where sanity and truth prevail. He now becomes the Correction for the separation, so in making the choice to forgive, we call on that part of the mind that brings sanity into our awareness. This means each time we bring our misperceptions to the truth, we experience more peace and joy until that is our only reality.

The Holy Spirit is the mediator between illusions and the truth. Our part is to bring our illusions to Him so He can show us the truth of who we are. But how do we do that? We do that by looking at what is coming up in our minds is blocking the love we are. We do it by not judging whatever comes up in our awareness, but looking at it with honesty, courage and simple acceptance that this is part of the ego thought system we have come to identify with, but is not who we are. When we are sad, angry, feel betrayed, feel frustrated, worried, depressed, anxious, needy, wanting to get something, whatever feeling comes to our awareness, it is important to recognize the feeling or the thought (it doesn't matter which because it is the same), and take responsibility for it. It does not come from anything outside of our own minds, though to us it does seem others are the cause of our upsets by what they do or say. But the truth is our own minds are the source of our upsets. It is the wrong-minded choice for the ego and with it has come guilt and fear based on our belief we have separated from God. Now the ego has told us we had better hide from God's retribution, and so we live in a state of fear we are afraid to look at. We distract ourselves from it, but the fear is not real and has no power.

What the Holy Spirit does is bridge the gap between illusions and reality. What He needs from us is simple willingness to allow Him to translate sights and sounds, which are now witnesses to guilt and fear, to those of love. (7.2.2). Basically this means everything we have made to hurt ourselves He can use for healing. In this world, our bodies were made for separation, differences and attack, but when we use them for the purpose of forgiveness and healing, they can be used to extend His love. The same can be said about our special relationships, which can be given over to the Holy Spirit so He can translate what we made to serve our specialness and bring it all up for healing and wholeness.

Without the Holy Spirit in our right minds, we would be forever lost in the dream. Now our dreams are "all carried to the truth, to be dispelled before the light of knowledge." (W.PII.Q7.1.3) The ultimate goal is the attainment of the real world, which is the end of dreams. Thus, learning is the means by which illusions are replaced by eternal truth. This learning requires that we recognize we have been wrong about everything we think we know because we have been listening to the voice of the ego that has misled us. But now we can learn there is another Voice that can bring us home.
 

When Jesus speaks of God's yearning or God's incompletion, we need to see this is a symbol, which simply is trying to communicate to us how deep, unchanging and eternal is God's Love for us. This kind of symbolic language is important and simply reflects the yearning in us for God. In this world of dreams, we live with fearful images that reflect guilt and attack, which we see all around us in this world. They are not real, but in our current state, they appear very real and very frightening. When we bring them to the Holy Spirit, He will show us what we see as real and frightening are our own misperceptions of who we are and what the world is. What He does is translate the sights and sounds that frighten us "from the witnesses of fear to those of love." (W.PII.Q7.2.2)
 

The ego uses the sights and sounds of this world to keep us invested in the illusion. To us, the events of our lives all seem very real and solid. We agonize over issues of relationships, money, worthiness, career, future plans, health and well-being, etc. To us, they define the content of our lives and their achievement seems to bring fulfillment, but it is always temporary and ultimately ends in pain. But we find it so challenging to take what we experience and put it all to question when we define some things as pleasure. Jesus calls these experiences "children's toys" we have given power to. These are our idols. "All idols of this world were made to keep the truth within from being known to you, and to maintain allegiance to the dream that you must find what is outside yourself to be complete and happy. It is vain to worship idols in the hope of peace. God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him." (T.29.VII.6.1-3) (ACIM OE T.29.VIII.48) Jesus reminds us again that our happiness will never come from these idols, nor from seeking outside of ourselves. We can only know our happiness as we look at all of our misperceptions and bring them to the truth within.
 

Jesus reminds us what we've made can never bring us happiness. But we are attached to what we have made. The only happiness is in what we have been given by God. Yet we are not entirely convinced. We still look for happiness in our specialness. But happiness is forever unattainable when we seek for it in what we think will serve us because it is always at the expense of others. When we use others for that purpose, we will hate what we think we have become, because it is all based on sin and guilt. Now we can offer all of our mistaken notions of where our happiness lies, and ask for help of the Holy Spirit to show us the real source of happiness, which is within our own minds. When we bring the problem to the solution, the answer is given. "And if you offer them [our mistaken notions] to Him, He will employ the means you made for exile to restore your mind to where it truly is at home." (W.PII.Q7.3.3) When we look through Christ's vision on every brother, we can only bring healing and blessing. In our special relationships, we try to extract love from our brothers to meet our needs. Thus, we try to win at their expense. It is a relationship of bargaining and reciprocity, and these relationships are used to try to fill our lacks and use our brothers in this process. Of course, he is trying to do the same thing, and thus the conflict starts.
 

We call the relationship special love when our needs are met, but how quickly these relationships become special hate when his part of the bargain is not perfectly delivered. It is not actually his bargain, but the one that we have put on him with our expectations of what special love should look like for us to be happy. When we recognize the harm done through these special relationships, we turn to the Holy Spirit and call on Him for help. His function is to translate everything we have made to harm into His purpose of healing. Thus, through forgiveness, all of our relationships are translated by Him to healing and holiness.

"Without forgiveness will your dreams remain to terrify you. And the memory of all your Father's Love will not return to signify the end of dreams has come." (W.PII.Q7.4.2-3) By learning to forgive, we realize no one has harmed or hurt us. We realize the only harm that seems to come to us is from our own interpretations of situations and events. If we are not feeling happy and at peace, it is because we have chosen to disown the happiness and peace in us and to blame it on our brother. It is based on the belief that something is missing in us and we need to find it outside of ourselves. We make others responsible for our happiness. But no one outside of ourselves can ever, or will ever, meet our need for love. All we need is within us, waiting for our invitation, because ultimately all we need is in who we really are, outside of this dream. The Answer to every desire, every need, every problem is within. God's Love for us is symbolized by the Holy Spirit, Who "calls to you, to let forgiveness rest upon your dreams, and be restored to sanity and peace of mind." (W.PII.Q7.4.1)
   

In this Lesson, Jesus says, "I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts." This is truly a powerful idea that only I have the power to hurt me. The responsibility is mine. If we are thinking with the Holy Spirit, we can only know peace. Whenever we are in pain, sad, hurt, or ill, we are actually producing these responses with our own thoughts. Thus, the power is available to us to change our minds. We don't always welcome this power because with it comes the responsibility for everything that seems to be happening to us. It means we have called it into our experience and are not the victims of the world we see. The stories we tell ourselves of how we have been victimized are simply not the truth. They are our justification for our situation, where we prefer to blame others rather than see we are responsible. But now we have an opportunity to choose again. The cause of everything we experience is in our own minds.

This is a tough one, because for some this means they feel they are to blame for their sickness, and the things that seem to bring pain into their lives. This is just as counterproductive as it is to blame the world for what is happening. It is more important, we simply watch our thoughts and use the Course teaching for our healing. This is where the Holy Spirit comes in. We would be stuck in the illusion forever without His help. Since we see ourselves as caught in the illusion, and we believe in it, we need help from outside of our own thinking minds. The Holy Spirit can work with our false beliefs and concepts if we turn them over to Him. He works with us in this world of illusions while never losing contact with the truth. So our part is to bring our thoughts and perceptions to Him so He can restore us to Knowledge. "In reality you are perfectly unaffected by all expressions of lack of love. These can be from yourself and others, from yourself to others, or from others to you. Peace is an attribute in you. You cannot find it outside." (T-2.I.5.6-9)(ACIM OE T.2.I.17)
 

All of our pain in this world is caused by the guilt in our minds as a result of our belief that we have separated from Love. We project that guilt onto others and see it in them instead of in ourselves. Clearly they give us lots of evidence it is there. However, what we see in others originates in our own minds. They become a mirror for us reflecting our own sin and guilt. Attacking them for their misbehavior only brings more guilt into our own minds. If we are willing to take responsibility for our own hatred, without succumbing to the temptation to blame our brothers, we can know our brothers' innocence as well as our own. This comes through our willingness to see we have been wrong in our perceptions and to ask for help from the Holy Spirit to see our brothers differently. To forgive one brother completely is enough because Jesus will generalize this experience for us.

The teaching Jesus is offering us, through this Course, is our way out of the pain of our lives. Today, we can be thankful for each brother who contributes so perfectly to this journey home as well as to each situation we encounter in our lives. I am thankful for each one on my path who encourages me, challenges me, supports me, comforts me, blesses me and loves me. Through each of you I am learning to open up to more and more love. As the Lesson we will be reading tomorrow says, to open up to love is to decide not to be insane any longer and to accept ourselves as we were created. We are not just beings who love, but we are Love itself! Together, we can affirm this in gratitude. As we reflect on Canadian Thanksgiving, we open our hearts to the blessings and miracles that surround us at every moment.

If it is a time of sadness and darkness for you, know that behind every problem is a miracle waiting to be revealed. Our part is to be willing to release any pain we perceive and are holding in our thoughts to the Holy Spirit, reminding ourselves our true Self cannot be hurt. What I am in truth is "far beyond all pain." (W.281.2.2) Only the self we think we are can be hurt, but only by our own thoughts. "Whatever suffers is not part of me. What grieves is not myself." (W.PII.248.1.3-4)
 

In any relationship, recognize the perfection of being together because what your partner brings up in you is exactly that which you need to heal within yourself. What one brings to a relationship to be healed, the other has within himself as well. It may be in another form but it will not be seen in the brother if it does not already exist in our own minds. One may show up as the critic and the other as unworthy, but beneath the critic is the fear of unworthiness. And beneath unworthiness is self-judgment. What does self-judgment do? It invites judgment (criticism) from others. Both have the same dynamic going on. The relationship becomes powerful when there is a willingness to really look at our feelings, and to look beneath them at the dynamic there. When we are willing to ask the Holy Spirit to shine the light of truth on all of this, it will all be dissolved. This kind of relationship does not always look lovely, but it is very powerful when used by the Holy Spirit for the healing of our minds. It requires a strong measure of honesty and responsibility. We do not like going into these dark places, yet Jesus says he will go there with us. He asks only that we don't judge our experience but simply accept it.

Now more and more I am willing to invite the darkness to show up in any form that is helpful because I want to heal it. It is not a bad thing. It is only difficult if there is no way out of it or if I believe it defines me. If there is judgment instead of acceptance and willingness, we will not want to look at our murderous and painful thoughts. When we realize the miracle is right behind our dark thoughts, we are more willing to lift the veil of denial. The miracle is always waiting to shine forth. It is only obscured by darkness. There is no order of difficulty in the illusion. Every problem is the same. None of it is true or real. Every problem brought to the miracle is healed.

Next time you feel anger coming up, recognize it is just part of the flow of your life and your only choice is to stay in the experience of pain and suffering or bring it to a higher vibration by accepting the truth behind it. If you want to know the truth,  be grateful for the darkness because it gives you an opportunity to know the light. When there is willingness to look at all of these dark thoughts with acceptance, we are no longer in denial. The ego seems complicated, yet we can be very grateful how simple the truth is.

I find if I just take a moment to stop in the midst of conflict, and ask for another way to see my brother, I can transmute what seems dark and difficult into a recognition it is just a movie. Believing what I am seeing and experiencing is the truth is suffering. Nothing is ever wrong. Each instant that comes up is absolutely perfect. Our choice is only in how we see it. Why not accept everything that shows up? There really is no other option unless we want to suffer. The reason every moment is perfect is because it shows us exactly what we are thinking and feeling in that moment. Any difficulty is helpful because it shows us what is currently in the mind and offers us another way of seeing. Accept each moment as it is and accept responsibility for everything you see or judge. What happens if I am sad and choose to get upset with my sadness? It simply brings on the next moment. But if instead I accept the sadness instead of judge it, then the next moment is one of a higher vibration. The energy of acceptance is very powerful because it brings us back into our essence.

Movies can be very helpful in this regard. Last night I watched the movie "Impossible," which was based on a true story of what a family experienced during the 2004 tsunami in Thailand. It was a very difficult movie for me to watch and there is a lot I could say about all of the emotions that came up in me, but in the interests of brevity, I will only comment on what impacted me the most. We all have taken in on an intellectual level about how painful the separation from God is, but the movie brought up an experience of the depth of that pain. It brought up such deep angst I cried and cried. Yes, the separation as a human condition is painful, but for me it went deeper. It gave me an opportunity to feel deeply how painful is the separation from God.

Today be willing to bring all your pain, anger, and suffering of any kind to the light without defending any of it. Accept your feelings without judging them.

"Father, Your Son is perfect. When I think that I am hurt in any way, it is because I have forgotten who I am, and that I am as You created me. Your Thoughts can only bring me happiness. If ever I am sad or hurt or ill, I have forgotten what You think, and put my little meaningless ideas in place of where Your Thoughts belong, and where they are. I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts. The Thoughts I think with You can only bless. The Thoughts I think with You alone are true." (W.281.1.1-7)