What Does It Mean to Be Truly Helpful?

“I mean, those three vows that the monks and the nuns take are poverty, chastity, and obedience. Obedience is basically obedience to your intuitive Self, to your higher Self, to the Holy Spirit, to the way shower inside your mind, inside your heart. Is becoming obedient, like I will follow the direction of this higher wise being that’s within me that knows who I truly am. And to admit that I don’t know the way in order to be guided. In order to open up to guidance to show me the way, I have to first come to the humbleness to admit that my personal way has not worked! I’ve been trying to choose my way through time and space as a human being, and it has not brought me happiness. You know, it’s almost like in 12 Steps where you have to admit that you are powerless over your addictions. You have to almost, with A Course in Miracles, admit that you are powerless over the human condition that has been set up because nothing’s worked!

In fact, it has worked so horribly we could say that Jesus even has to be quite firm in the Course and Jesus has to say, ‘Resign now as your own teacher.’ T-12.V.8:3 He’s basically saying, I can guide you, but you’re gonna have to resign first! Because if I’m trying to guide you, and you’re trying to guide yourself, it’s gonna be a lot of struggle, a war going on in there. But if you resign as your own teacher, as you resign trying to think that you know enough from your own past learning to find your way out of time and space. If you still believe that you can do that based on everything that you’ve learned in the past, then you’re not going to be able to make that conversion into being of true service. And you will not know how to be truly helpful either because that past learning will be too much of an interference pattern. They will block the Holy Spirit’s guidance if you already have enough of an ‘I know’ mind that says, Thank you very much. You just give me some pep talks occasionally, but I’m in charge of my bank account. I’m in charge of who my relationships are. I’m in charge of my job. I’m in charge of where I live. I’m in charge of what I eat and what I put into this body. Okay, Jesus, you give me a good little pep talk every once in a while, but I’m running the show down here, and you can give me a pep talk every once in a while.

It is going nowhere! If you wonder why your Course in Miracles practice is going nowhere, is because you haven’t given it over yet! You haven’t said, Here, I give you the whole kit and caboodle! You take the bank account, you take the mortgage, you take the kids, you take the neighbors, you take my state of mind, take my car, take my skills, take my abilities, you take it all, and then you use it to help me unwind from my egoic perceptions of who I am and the world. Now that’s gonna work! If you do that, I swear, just by having the prayer of your heart of resigning now as your own teacher and say, ‘I would but follow, be You in charge.’ That’s how the Workbook ends: ‘Be You in charge. For I would follow You.’ W-365 I do not know the way. I do not know salvation’s ways, but you do. I will listen, I will follow, be You in charge. That is what accelerates spiritual awakening, and ultimately that right there is what triggers the opening to being of true service.”