Trusting in God, Life and Relationship

by Sondra Ray

“Your Mind is one with God’s.” (T 63) “I am one with God.”
(W 222-4)

What is God’s mind like? God has no cause to worry. He did not create misery, pain, suffering, fear, guilt, anger, sickness and death. These are the mistaken creations of the ego thought system, which is based on separation, made up by us when we thought we had separated ourselves from God.

As long as you think you are separate from God, you will suffer guilt and fear punishment. One of the ways of punishing yourself is with pain. Created by the ego mind, pain is the effort involved in clinging to a negative thought. If we think someone else created the pain, we will experience more fear and not be able to heal it ourselves. If we think God is punishing us, we will have a terrible fear of God. We have even gone so far as to make the mistake of thinking that God kills. This is insane. God is life itself!

Because we fear God, we do not feel safe with Him and, therefore, find it difficult to trust Him. Yet God is the only safety there is; trust would be instant if we did not confuse God with the ego. The ego is a false self we made up to replace God, a collection of negative, limiting thoughts that keep us from remembering that we are one with God. Thoughts such as “I am bad” or “I am not good enough” can remain buried in our subconscious mind, preventing us from thinking that we deserve a life free of pain. Or, perhaps, the thought: “I hurt my mother at birth” might lead us to assume we should be punished.

These thoughts act as a barrier to trust and prevent us from feeling God’s love or the safety He brings. The most important thought to change is “death is inevitable”. How can you trust God if you think it inevitable that He kills people?

A Course in Miracles says: “Death is the result of the thought we call the ego, as surely as life is the result of the Thought of God.” (T 417)

It also says: “The death penalty is the ego's ultimate goal, for it fully believes that you are a criminal, as deserving of death... The death penalty never leaves the ego's mind, for that is what it always reserves for you in the end… It will torment you while you live, but its hatred is not satisfied until you die.” (T 232-3)

As long as you listen to the ego, it will tell you that you are guilty and, therefore, deserve death. This thought can confuse you to such an extent that you begin to think that death comes from God and not from the ego. If you then confuse yourself with the ego, you might begin to think you want death.

Remember that Jesus did not die. The Course asks: “Would I have overcome death for myself alone? And would eternal life have been given me of the Father unless He had also given it to you?” (T 233) It does not make sense. When you learn to manifest Christ Consciousness in yourself, you will never want or see death.

It is important to know that no one dies unless he chooses death. A Course In Miracles explains this, over and over. You get attracted to the idea of death because you think you are a sinner and, therefore, you request death as a punishment. How many more times will you choose to die and reincarnate before learning that there is another way? Why not just accept, in this lifetime, that the ego is insane.

The Course says repeatedly that you will not escape the laws of disease and death if you misuse the body. If you use the body for attack (anger), forget it. You are way off.

Knowing that death is the result of the thought called the ego helps a lot. And knowing that you are in charge of your thoughts and can change them is the real key. So you could just as easily have the thought: “I am safe and immortal right now” and “Life is a result of the Thought of God.” (T 417)

Focusing on the negative will increase pain and decrease your trust in God. Do not hold on to a destructive or negative thought; there is no need. You must do whatever is necessary to plunge your mind into the infinite mind of God. You could try chanting, or reading ACIM out . Try talking to Him intimately. Breathe in the Holy Spirit. Get rebirthed! (see below)

To the ego, love is fearful and life is death. What a confusion! To be enlightened, you have to replace the ego’s thought system with the Holy Spirit’s thought system. This is exactly what we are trying to help people do through Rebirthing. We breathe out the old ego negative thoughts and take in the Light of the Holy Spirit. Since God’s will for you is perfect happiness (W 182-3), you can give up your fear of God’s Will. When bad things happen, it is not what God has willed for you; it is the creation of your own impure, subconscious mind. You can clear your subconscious mind.

Since you are not separate from God, you must be One with God. You can, therefore, be anything, do anything and have anything... even a Holy Relationship. But the problem is we have a shaky identity. We believe there is something lacking in us and there are certain things we need to make us whole.

We think a partner will enable us to cover up our guilt and make us feel good about ourselves. We turn them into idols then feel guilty because we feel we have used each other. We may also get angry when our partner does not, eventually, meet our perceived needs. This special relationship is really unholy. It is filled with attack, blame and dumping onto the other. The special relationship is the ego’s chief weapon to keep us from God (T 341). We cannot be free of it until we stop attacking our own identity and throwing God away. Our substitute for God becomes the special relationship, which is a pseudo heaven. How can it work when we have transferred to another the ownership of our soul?

We asked God to make us special and, when he would not, we separated from Him and made our own world. That world was an attempt to relieve us of our guilt for abandoning Him.

Abandoning him reinforces the belief that we are sinners, and that God is out to destroy us. The belief in sin is the request for death. We cannot stand the thought of being a sinner, so we project that onto another or onto the world. The whole ego mind is a battlefield and, by staying in it, you will never have a holy relationship.

But you are entitled to a holy relationship. To have one, you have to know you can join with another and share a common goal. With a mutual goal of peace, you become each other’s saviour. A holy relationship is one in which each person looks within and sees no lack. Accepting his completion, he joins with another who is also complete (T 467) and they come together to share the light. You invite in the Holy Spirit and His goal, and Jesus becomes present.

It is wonderful to think about this new paradigm and to practise it. Seeing both yourself and your partner as sinless, your partner’s greatest value is as your mirror.

He or she will help you to free your ego. With a shared goal of truth and sanity, you will learn to disconnect from the battlefield. Once you have left your history behind and stopped using the past as a reference point, you will learn how to manifest happiness by entering the holy instant. Forgive each other constantly and never hold onto grudges, then you will both become who you truly are. This is possible, it just has to be learned.

Dear Holy Spirit, from now on, in every brother, I choose to see God. I pray to recognise myself in him, I choose to recognise God in him. I do not wish to attack God, or myself, therefore, I do not attack my brother by getting angry with him. Since I know my brother and my brother knows me, we are already in a loving relationship. There is no need to play the game of strangers. Thank you for all my loved ones. I ask that I do not let my ego keep me from the joy I deserve. If I feel fear around joy, it is not because joy is fearful. I know it is just my ego trying to keep me away from that joy. Let not my ego reign. I pray that I will always go toward joy. When I am not feeling joyous, please remind me that I have chosen wrongly and I can clear this. Remind me to ask myself: “What have I thought that You would not have thought? What have I not thought that You would have me think?”

Remind me to choose peace over conflict in every case. I pray that I am careful not to create conflict, add to it nor support it. I am willing to promote peace, spread peace and teach peace. Please help me. I give up all conflict in myself so that I find peace of mind myself. I am willing for my ego to fail, so that I can experience Your success! I turn over all my relationships to you for perfection. When someone is upset, afraid or disturbed, remind me that they are appealing for help. Help me to turn up the love and to ask them how I can support them.

I turn over my body to you for my ascension. I forgive myself for believing in hell and death. I relinquish these notions now and forever. May my body be perfect so that I can serve you and my brothers.

Love, Sondra