NOTE: Before proceeding with the question, you will see two (website name undisclosed). The reason being is, I don't want to take a chance that any of their information may be debated, and to also show respect to their privacy.

Question: "I was wondering if you'd be willing to share a little bit about the part that disillusionment has played in your life. Like when, what and how. I feel like I've been in a state of disillusionment for some time but only recently - like today - did it finally dawn on me that that is the word to fit my experiencing when I started reading lesson 24 and in particular reading (website name undisclosed) and her commentary on that lesson as well as on (website name undisclosed) and his commentary on that lesson too. I always get something from your sharings this is why I am asking. Many many thanks and much gratitude!"

Commentary: I am not sure if I understand your question, however, I went ahead and briefly read lesson 24 which I am going to quote one paragraph from that lesson, and see if whatever it is am sharing may serve you in any way. If I have not being able to answer the question because maybe I was answering the wrong thing, just let me know and let's see what comes up.

So let me look at your question first:

> I was wondering if you'd be willing to share a little bit about
> the part that disillusionment has played in your life.
> Like when, what and how.

Really I think that disillusionment happens when I have some kind of an expectation. Also when my attention is on the world, and my life does not seem to be working the way I wish, I could feel disillusionment. But the more I keep putting my attention on Spirit, meaning Peace, then life is just a continuum of events that passes by.

Also, as I continue trusting that everything is happening in divine order for my highest good, it helps me just detach, and surrender to the experience, and in that space we cannot experience suffering or disillusionment.

Now, here is where it gets interesting. When we feel something, let's call it disillusionment, depressed, sad, down, etc., the feeling that we are feeling, not being real, all that the Course is asking us to do is to offer them to the Holy Spirit without ANAL-izing them.

Because there is nothing wrong with feeling the way we do, the problem comes when we believe the stories we are making in our head about them.

Simply remember that everything is temporary and transitory, and so are your feelings and disillusionments. What keeps them lingering longer is when we try to figure anything out of to even make sense out of them

Now let me look at the paragraph I was reading from lesson 24.

"If you realized that you do not perceive your own best interests, you could be taught what they are. 2 But in the presence of your conviction that you do know what they are, you cannot learn. 3 The idea for today is a step toward opening your mind so that learning can begin." W-pI.24.2.

In other words, what the lesson is asking us to remember is that we never know anything. And in order to allow the Holy Spirit to teach us, we must first let go of what we think we know and what we think anything means, especially what we feel.

So for example, you could say, "I feel disillusionment." Although to you, that is what you feel, specially because the body is experiencing feelings that you may choose to label them as disillusionment, what the Course would say is, ¿how do you know that what you are feeling is disillusionment? So as long as you label how you feel, you are NOT allowing yourself the opportunity to be taught.

This is when the practice becomes tricky, because here we are feeling like "crap" and wanting the feeling to be gone, meanwhile what the Holy Spirit is giving us is an opportunity to actually look, this time however, with Jesus and not with the ego.

With Jesus we just do not judge, and therefore we can experience peace, detachment. With the ego however, we judge, we give meaning, and therefore we experience suffering, disillusionment, which in reality is just one word, fear!

So yea, I have felt like you do, and many other feelings also, but I am clear now that the only answer I have if forgiveness. And the way I practice it, is by just allowing things to be just as they are.

So remember, whatever it is you are experiencing, just be with it, and offer it to the Holy Spirit, because all that is happening is that the ego is fighting for your attention. And your choice is to decide who do you want to give your attention to, the Holy Spirit (peace)? Or the ego (conflict)?

"...you must choose to hear one of two voices within you. One you made yourself, and that one is not of God. But the other is given you by God, Who asks you only to listen to it." T-5.II.3:4-5

That's really all we are asked to do, and this too shall pass! Trust me brother, I've been there, got the T-shirt! And if more T-shirts seem to be coming my way, is so that my mind can be healed!

You are doing wonderfully! Congratulations!!!

Referring back to the last ACIM quote, remember that the one voice that you made yourself is the one labeling your situation as disillusionment. The one that is given you by God is simply reminding you:

"Ask to be taught, and do not use your experiences to confirm what you have learned. 6 When your peace is threatened or disturbed in any way, say to yourself: I do not know what anything, including this, means. 8 And so I do not know how to respond to it. 9 And I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me now. By this refusal to attempt to teach yourself what you do not know, the Guide Whom God has given you will speak to you. 11 He will take His rightful place in your awareness the instant you abandon it, and offer it to Him." T-14.XI.6.5-11

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