Monday, May 31, 2010

ACIM REVIEW 149

A Course In Miracles Workbook Lessons

Lesson 149

“My mind holds only what I think with God.”
[137] "When I am healed I am not healed alone."
[138] "Heaven is the decision I must make."

Sunday, May 30, 2010

ACIM REVIEW 148

Lesson 148

“My mind holds only what I think with God.”
[135] "If I defend myself I am attacked."
[136] "Sickness is a defence against the truth."

Saturday, May 29, 2010

ACIM REVIEW 147

A Course In Miracles Workbook Lessons

Lesson 147

“My mind holds only what I think with God.”
[133] "I will not value what is valueless."
[134] "Let me perceive forgiveness as it is."

Friday, May 28, 2010

ACIM REVIEW 146

A Course In Miracles Workbook Lessons

Lesson 146

“My mind holds only what I think with God.”
[131] "No-one can fail who asks to reach the truth."
[132] "I loose the world from all I thought it was."

Thursday, May 27, 2010

ACIM REVIEW 145

A Course In Miracles Workbook Lessons

Lesson 145

“My mind holds only what I think with God.”
[129] "Beyond this world there is a world I want."
[130] "It is impossible to see two worlds."

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

ACIM REVIEW 144

Lesson 144

“My mind holds only what I think with God.”
[127] "There is no love but God’s."
[128] "The world I see has nothing that I want."

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

ACIM REVIEW 143

Lesson 143

“My mind holds only what I think with God.”
[125] "In quiet I receive God’s Word today."
[126] "All that I give is given to myself."

ACIM REVIEW 143

Monday, May 24, 2010

ACIM Lesson 142 “My mind holds only what I think with God.” [123] "I thank my Father for His gifts to me." [124] "Let me remember I am one with God."

Lesson  142

“My mind holds only what I think with God.”
[123] "I thank my Father for His gifts to me."
[124] "Let me remember I am one with God."

Sunday, May 23, 2010

ACIM Lesson 142

Lesson 142

My mind holds only what I think with God.
(123) I thank my Father for His gifts to me.
(124) Let me remember I am one with God.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

ACIM Lesson 141 Review

Lesson 141

“My mind holds only what I think with God.”
[121] “Forgiveness is the key to happiness.”
[122] “Forgiveness offers everything I want.”

ACIM REVIEW 4

REVIEW IV

Now a review again, this time aware we are preparing for the second part of learning how the truth can be applied. Today we will begin to concentrate on readiness for what will follow next. Such is our aim for this review and for the lessons following. Thus we review the recent lessons and their central thoughts in such a way as will facilitate the readiness which we would now achieve.

There is a central theme that unifies each step in the review we undertake, which can be simply stated in these words:
“My mind holds only what I think with God.”
This is a fact, and represents the truth of What you are and What your Father is. It is this Thought by which the Father gave creation to the Son, establishing the Son as co-creator with Himself. It is this Thought which fully guarantees salvation to the Son. For in his mind no thoughts can dwell but those his Father shares. Lack of forgiveness blocks this Thought from his awareness. Yet It is forever true.

Let us begin our preparation with some understanding of the many forms in which the lack of true forgiveness may be carefully concealed. Because they are illusions, they are not perceived to be but what they are; defenses which protect your unforgiving thoughts from being seen and recognized. Their purpose is to show you something else, and hold correction off through self-deceptions made to take its place.

And yet your mind holds only what you think with God. Your self-deceptions cannot take the place of truth. No more than can a child who throws a stick into the ocean change the coming and the going of the tides, the warming of the water by the sun, the silver of the moon on it by night. So do we start each practice period in this review with readying our minds to understand the lessons that we read, and see the meaning which they offer us.

Begin each day with time devoted to the preparation of your mind to learn what each idea you will review that day can offer you in freedom and in peace. Open your mind and clear it of all thoughts that would deceive, and let this Thought alone engage it fully and remove the rest:
“My mind holds only what I think with God.”
Five minutes with this Thought will be enough to set the day along the lines which God appointed, and to place His Mind in charge of all the thoughts you will receive that day. They will not come from you alone, for they will all be shared with Him. And so each one will bring the message of His Love to you, returning messages of yours to Him. So will communion with the Lord of
Hosts be yours, as He Himself has willed it be. And as His Own completion joins with Him so will He join with you who are complete as you unite with Him and He with you.

After your preparation, merely read each of the two ideas assigned to you to be reviewed that day. Then close your eyes and say them slowly to yourself. There is no hurry now, for you are using time for its intended purpose. Let each word shine with the meaning God has given it as it was given to you through His Voice. Let each idea that you review that day give you the gift which He has laid in it for you to have of Him. And we will use no format for our practicing but this:

Each hour of the day bring to your mind the Thought with which the day began, and spend a quiet moment with It. Then repeat the two ideas you practice for the day unhurriedly, with time enough to see the gifts which they contain for you, and let them be received where they were meant to be. We add no other thoughts, but let them be the messages they are. We need no more than that to give us happiness and rest and endless quiet, perfect certainty, and all our Father wills that we receive as the inheritance we have of Him.

Each day of practicing, as we review, we close as we began, repeating first the Thought that made the day a special time of blessing and of happiness for us; and through our faithfulness restored the world from darkness to the light, from grief to joy, from pain to peace, from sin to holiness. God offers thanks to you who practice thus the keeping of His Word. And as you give your mind to the ideas for the day again before you sleep, His gratitude surrounds you in the peace wherein He wills you be forever, and are learning now to claim again as your inheritance.

Friday, May 21, 2010

ACIM Lesson 140 Only salvation can bee said to cure.

Lesson 140
“Only salvation can be said to cure.”

Cure is a word that cannot be applied to any remedy the world accepts as beneficial. What the world perceives as therapeutic is but what will make the body “better.” When it tries to heal the mind, it sees no separation from the body, where it thinks the mind exists. Its forms of healing thus must substitute illusion for illusion. One belief in sickness takes another form, and so the patient now perceives himself as well.

He is not healed. He merely had a dream that he was sick, and in the dream he found a magic formula to make him well. Yet he has not awakened from the dream, and so his mind remains exactly as it was before. He has not seen the light that would awaken him and end the dream. What difference does the content of a dream make in reality? One either sleeps or wakens. There is nothing in between.

The happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings are different from the dreams of the world, where one can merely dream he is awake. The dreams forgiveness lets the mind perceive do not induce another form of sleep, so that the dreamer dreams another dream. His happy dreams are heralds of the dawn of truth upon the mind. They lead from sleep to gentle waking, so that dreams are gone. And thus they cure for all eternity.

Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return.

Peace be to you who have been cured in God, and not in idle dreams. For cure must come from holiness, and holiness can not be found where sin is cherished. God abides in holy temples. He is barred where sin has entered. Yet there is no place where He is not. And therefore sin can have no home in which to hide from His beneficence .There is no place where holiness is not, and nowhere sin and sickness can abide.

This is the thought that cures. It does not make distinctions among unrealities. Nor does it seek to heal what is not sick, unmindful where the need for healing is. This is no magic. It is merely an appeal to truth, which cannot fail to heal and heal forever. It is not a thought which judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. It merely focuses on what it is, and knows that no illusion can be real.
Let us not try today to seek to cure what cannot suffer sickness. Healing must be sought but where it is, and then applied to what is sick so that it can be cured. There is no remedy the world provides that can effect a change in anything. The mind that brings illusions to the truth is really changed. There is no change but this. For how can one illusion differ from another but in attributes that have no substance, no reality, no core, and nothing that is truly different?

Today we seek to change our minds about the source of sickness, for we seek a cure for all illusions, not another shift among them. We will try today to find the source of healing, which is in our minds because our Father placed it there for us. It is not further from us than ourselves. It is as near to us as our own thoughts, so close it is impossible to lose. We need but seek it and it must be found.

We will not be misled today by what appears to us as sick. We go beyond appearances today, and reach the source of healing from which nothing is exempt. We will succeed to the extent to which we realize that there can never be a meaningful distinction made between what is untrue and equally untrue. Here there are no degrees, and no beliefs that what does not exist is truer in some forms than others. All of them are false, and can be cured because they are not true.

So do we lay aside our amulets, our charms and medicines, our chants and bits of magic in whatever form they took. We will be still and listen for the Voice of healing which will cure all ills as one, restoring saneness to the Son of God. No voice but This can cure. Today we hear a single Voice Which speaks to us of truth where all illusions end, and peace returns to the eternal quiet home of God.

We waken hearing Him, and let Him speak to us five minutes as the day begins, and end the day by listening again five minutes more before we go to sleep. Our only preparation is to let our interfering thoughts be laid aside, not separately, but all of them as one. They are the same. We have no need to make them different, and thus delay the time when we can hear our Father speak to us. We hear Him now. We come to Him today.

With nothing in our hands to which we cling, with lifted hearts and listening minds we pray:
“Only salvation can be said to cure.
Speak to us, Father, that we may be healed.”
And we will feel salvation cover us with soft protection, and with peace so deep that no illusion can disturb our minds, nor offer proof to us that it is real. This will we learn today. And we will say our prayer for healing hourly, and take a minute as the hour strikes to hear the answer to our prayer be given us as we attend in silence and in joy. This is the day when healing comes to us. This is the day when separation ends, and we remember Who we really are.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

ACIM Lesson 139 I will accept Atonement for myself.

Lesson 139

I will accept Atonement for myself.
Here is the end of choice. For here we come to a decision to accept ourselves as God created us. And what is choice except uncertainty of what we are? There is no doubt that is not rooted here. There is no question but reflects this one. There is no conflict that does not entail the single, simple question, "What am I?"
Yet who could ask this question except one who has refused to recognize himself? Only refusal to accept yourself could make the question seem to be sincere. The only thing that can be surely known by any living thing is what it is. From this one point of certainty, it looks on other things as certain as itself.
Uncertainty about what you must be is self-deception on a scale so vast, its magnitude can hardly be conceived. To be alive and not to know yourself is to believe that you are really dead. For what is life except to be yourself, and what but you can be alive instead? Who is the doubter? What is it he doubts? Whom does he question? Who can answer him?
He merely states that he is not himself, and therefore, being something else, becomes a questioner of what that something is. Yet he could never be alive at all unless he knew the answer. If he asks as if he does not know, it merely shows he does not want to be the thing he is. He has accepted it because he lives; has judged against it and denied its worth, and has decided that he does not know the only certainty by which he lives.
Thus he becomes uncertain of his life, for what it is has been denied by him. It is for this denial that you need Atonement. Your denial made no change in what you are. But you have split your mind into what knows and does not know the truth. You are yourself. There is no doubt of this. And yet you doubt it. But you do not ask what part of you can really doubt yourself. It cannot really be a part of you that asks this question. For it asks of one who knows the answer. Were it part of you, then certainty would be impossible.
Atonement remedies the strange idea that it is possible to doubt yourself, and be unsure of what you really are. This is the depth of madness. Yet it is the universal question of the world. What does this mean except the world is mad? Why share its madness in the sad belief that what is universal here is true?
Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are. And they will come again until the time Atonement is accepted, and they learn it is impossible to doubt yourself, and not to be aware of what you are.
Only acceptance can be asked of you, for what you are is certain. It is set forever in the holy Mind of God, and in your own. It is so far beyond all doubt and question that to ask what it must be is all the proof you need to show that you believe the contradiction that you know not what you cannot fail to know. Is this a question, or a statement which denies itself in statement? Let us not allow our holy minds to occupy themselves with senseless musings such as this.
We have a mission here. We did not come to reinforce the madness that we once believed in. Let us not forget the goal that we accepted. It is more than just our happiness alone we came to gain. What we accept as what we are proclaims what everyone must be, along with us. Fail not your brothers, or you fail yourself. Look lovingly on them, that they may know that they are part of you, and you of them.
This does Atonement teach, and demonstrates the Oneness of God's Son is unassailed by his belief he knows not what he is. Today accept Atonement, not to change reality, but merely to accept the truth about yourself, and go your way rejoicing in the endless Love of God. It is but this that we are asked to do. It is but this that we will do today.
Five minutes in the morning and at night we will devote to dedicate our minds to our assignment for today. We start with this review of what our mission is:
I will accept Atonement for myself,
For I remain as God created me.

We have not lost the knowledge that God gave to us when He created us like Him. We can remember it for everyone, for in creation are all minds as one. And in our memory is the recall how dear our brothers are to us in truth, how much a part of us is every mind, how faithful they have really been to us, and how our Father's Love contains them all.
In thanks for all creation, in the Name of its Creator and His Oneness with all aspects of creation, we repeat our dedication to our cause today each hour, as we lay aside all thoughts that would distract us from our holy aim. For several minutes let your mind be cleared of all the foolish cobwebs which the world would weave around the holy Son of God. And learn the fragile nature of the chains that seem to keep the knowledge of yourself apart from your awareness, as you say:
I will accept Atonement for myself,
For I remain as God created me.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

ACIM Lesson 138 Heaven is the decision I must make.

Lesson 138
“Heaven is the decision I must make.”

In this world Heaven is a choice, because here we believe there are alternatives to choose between. We think that all things have an opposite, and what we want we choose. If Heaven exists there must be hell as well, for contradiction is the way we make what we perceive and what we think is real. Creation knows no opposite. But here is opposition part of being “real.”

It is this strange perception of the truth which makes the choice of Heaven seem to be the same as the relinquishment of hell. It is not really thus. Yet what is true in God’s creation cannot enter here until it is reflected in some form the world can understand. Truth cannot
come where it could only be perceived with fear, for this would be the error truth can be brought to illusions. Opposition makes the truth unwelcome, and it cannot come.

Choice is the obvious escape from what appears as opposites. Decision lets one of conflicting goals become the aim of effort and expenditure of time. Without decision time is but a waste and effort dissipated. It is spent for nothing in return. And time goes by without results. There is no sense of gain, for nothing is accomplished; nothing learned.

You need to be reminded that you think a thousand choices are confronting you, when there is really only one to make. And even this but seems to be a choice. Do not confuse yourself with all the doubts that myriad decisions would induce. You make but one. And when that one is made you will perceive it was no choice at all, for truth is true and nothing else is real. There is no opposite to choose instead. There is no contradiction to the truth.

Choosing depends on learning. But the truth cannot be learned but only recognized. In recognition its acceptance lies, and as it is accepted it is known. But knowledge is beyond the goals we seek to teach within the framework of this course. Ours are teaching goals to be attained through learning how to reach them, what they are, and what they offer you. Decisions are the outcome of your learning, for they rest on what you have accepted as the truth of what you are and what your needs must be.

In this insanely complicated world Heaven appears to take the form of choice, rather than merely being what it is. Of all the choices you have tried to make this is the simplest, most definitive, the prototype of all the rest, the one which settles all decisions. If you could decide the rest, this one remains unsolved. But when you solve this one the others are resolved with it, for all decisions but conceal this one by taking different forms. Here is the final and the only choice in which is truth accepted or denied.

So we begin today considering the choice that time was made to help us make. Such is its holy purpose, now transformed from the intent you gave it; that it be a means for demonstrating hell is real, hope changes to despair, and life itself must in the end be overcome by death. In death alone are opposites resolved, for ending opposition is to die. And thus salvation must be seen as death, for life is seen as conflict. To resolve the conflict is to end your life as well.

These mad beliefs can gain unconscious hold of great intensity, and grip the mind with terror and anxiety so strong that it will not relinquish its ideas about its own protection. It must be saved from salvation, threatened to be safe, and magically armored against truth. And these decisions are made unaware to keep them safely undisturbed; apart from question and from reason and from doubt.

Heaven is chosen consciously. The choice cannot be made until alternatives are accurately seen and understood. All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding to be judged again, this time with Heaven’s help, and all mistakes in judgement which the mind had made before are open to correction as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed because their nothingness is recognized.

The conscious choice of Heaven is as sure as is the ending of the fear of hell when it is raised from its protective shield of unawareness, and is brought to light. Who can decide between the clearly seen and the unrecognized? Yet who can fail to make a choice between alternatives when only one is seen as valuable, the other as a wholly worthless thing, a but imagined source of guilt and pain? Who hesitates to make a choice like this? And shall we hesitate to choose today?
We make the choice for Heaven as we wake, and spend five minutes making sure that we have made the one decision that is sane. We recognize we make a conscious choice between what has existence and what has nothing but an appearance of the truth. Its pseudo-being brought to what is real, is flimsy and transparent in the light. It holds no terror now, for what was made enormous, vengeful, pitiless with hate, demands obscurity for fear to be invested there. Now it is recognized as but a foolish, trivial mistake.

Before we close our eyes in sleep tonight we reaffirm the choice that we have made each hour in between. And now we give the last five minutes of our waking day to the decision with which we awoke. As every hour passed, we have declared our choice again in a brief quiet time devoted to maintaining sanity. And finally we close the day with this, acknowledging we chose but what we want:

“Heaven is the decision I must make.
I make it now and will not change my mind,
Because it is the only thing I want.”

Monday, May 17, 2010

ACIM Lesson 137 When I am healed I am not healed alone.

Lesson 137
“When I am healed I am not healed alone.”

Today’s idea remains the central thought on which salvation rests. For healing is the opposite of all the world’s ideas which dwell on sickness and on separate states. Sickness is a retreat from others, and a shutting off of joining. It becomes a door that closes on a separate self, and keeps it isolated and alone.

Sickness is isolation. For it seems to keep one self apart from all the rest, to suffer what the others do not feel. It gives the body final power to make the separation real and keep the mind in solitary prison, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of sickened flesh which it can not surmount. The world obeys the laws that sickness serves, but healing operates apart from them.

It is impossible that anyone be healed alone. In sickness must he be apart and separate. But healing is his own decision to be one again, and to accept his Self with all Its parts intact and unassailed. In sickness does his Self appear to be dismembered and without the unity that gives It life. But healing is accomplished as he sees the body has no power to attack the universal Oneness of God’s Son.

Sickness would prove that lies must be the truth. But healing demonstrates that truth is true. The separation sickness would impose has never really happened. To be healed is merely to accept what always was the simple truth, and always will remain exactly as it has forever been. Yet eyes accustomed to illusions must be shown that what they look upon is false. So healing, never needed by the truth, must demonstrate that sickness is not real.

Healing might thus be called a counter-dream which cancels out the dream of sickness in the name of truth, but not in truth itself. Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins that never were accomplished, healing but removes illusions that have not occurred. Just as the real world will arise to take the place of what has never been at all, healing offers restitution for imagined states and false ideas which dreams embroider into pictures of the truth.

Yet think not healing is unworthy of your function here. For anti-Christ becomes more powerful than Christ to those who dream the world is real. The body seems to be more solid and more stable than the mind. And love becomes a dream, while fear remains the one reality that can be seen and justified and fully understood.

Just as forgiveness shines away all sin, and the real world will occupy the place of what you made, so healing must replace the fantasies of sickness which you hold before the simple truth. When sickness has been seen to disappear inspite of all the laws that hold it cannot but be real, then questions have been answered. And the laws can be no longer cherished nor obeyed.

Healing is freedom. For it demonstrates that dreams will not prevail against the truth. Healing is shared. And by this attribute it proves that laws unlike the ones which hold that sickness is inevitable are more potent than their sickly opposites. Healing is strength. For by its gentle hand is weakness overcome. And minds which were walled off within a body free to join with other minds, to be forever strong.

Healing, forgiveness, and the glad exchange of all the world of sorrow for a world where sadness cannot enter, are the means by which the Holy Spirit urges you to follow Him. His gentle lessons teach how easily salvation can be yours; how little practice you need undertake to let His laws replace the ones you made to hold yourself a prisoner to death.

His life becomes your own as you extend the little help He asks in freeing you from everything that ever caused you pain. And as you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you or who cross your mind or whom you touch, or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you. Perhaps you will not recognize them all, nor realize how great your offering to all the world when you let healing come to you. But you are never healed alone. And legions upon legions will receive the gift which you receive when you are healed.

Those who are healed become the instruments of healing. Nor does time elapse between the instant they are healed and all the grace of healing it is given them to give. What is opposed to God does not exist. And who accepts it not within his mind becomes a haven where the weary can remain to rest. For here is truth bestowed, and here are all illusions brought to truth.

Would you not offer shelter to God’s Will? You but invite your Self to be at home, and can this invitation be refused? Ask the inevitable to occur and you will never fail. The other choice is but to ask what cannot be to be, and this cannot succeed. Today we ask that only truth will occupy our minds; that thoughts of healing will this day go forth from what is healed to what must yet be healed, aware that they will both occur as one.

We will remember, as the hour strikes, our function is to let our minds be healed that we may carry healing to the world, exchanging curse for blessing, pain for joy, and separation for the peace of God. Is not a minute of the hour worth the giving to receive a gift like this? Is not a little time a small expense to offer for the gift of everything?

Yet must we be prepared for such a gift. And so we will begin the day with this, and give ten minutes to these thoughts with which we will conclude today at night as well:
“When I am healed I am not healed alone.
And I would share my healing with the world,
That sickness may be banished from the mind
Of God’s One Son, Who is my only Self.”
Let healing be through you this very day. And as you rest in quiet, be prepared to give as you receive, to hold but what you give, and to receive the Word of God to take the place of all the foolish thoughts that ever were imagined. Now we come together to make well all that was sick, and offer blessing where there was attack. Nor will we let this function be forgot as every hour of the day slips by, remembering our function with this thought:
“When I am healed I am not healed alone.
And I would bless my brothers, for I would
Be healed with them as they are healed with me.”

Sunday, May 16, 2010

ACIM Lesson 136 Sickness is a defense against the truth.

Lesson 136
“Sickness is a defence against the truth.”

No-one can heal unless he understands what purpose sickness seems to serve. For then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. When this is seen, healing is automatic. It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach that carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear.

Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself.

Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. They are secret magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. They seem to be unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them. In that second, even less, in which the choice is made, you recognize exactly what you would attempt to do, and then proceed to think that it is done.

Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real? All this cannot be done unconsciously. But afterwards your plan requires that you must forget you made it, so it seems to be external to your own intent; a happening beyond your state of mind, an outcome with a real effect on you, instead of one effected by your self.

It is this quick forgetting of the part you play in making your “reality” which makes defenses seem to be beyond your own control. But what you have forgot can be remembered, given willingness to reconsider the decision which is doubly shielded by oblivion. Your not remembering is but the sign that this decision still remains in force as far as your desires are concerned.

Mistake this not for fact. Defenses must make facts unrecognizable. They aim at doing this, and this they seem to do. Every defence takes fragments of the whole, assembles them without regard to all their true relationships, and thus constructs illusions of a whole which is not there. It is this process which imposes threat, and not whatever outcome may result.

When parts are wrested from the whole and seen as separate and wholes within themselves, they become symbols standing for attack upon the whole, successful in effect, and never to be seen as whole again. And yet you have forgotten that they stand but for your own decision of what should be real, to take the place of what is real.

Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick that truth may go away, and threaten your establishments no more.

How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth? Because it proves the body is not separate from you, and so you must be separate from the truth. You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it. Thus is your “true” identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be.

Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks you live but cannot overcome your choice to die. And so the body is more powerful than Everlasting Life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God’s design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will. His Son is dust, the Father incomplete, and chaos sits in triumph on His throne.

Such is your planning for your own defence. And you believe that Heaven quails before such mad attacks as these, with God made blind by your illusions, truth turned into lies, and all the universe made slave to laws which your defenses would impose on it. Yet who believes illusions but the one who made them up? Who else can see them and react to them as if they were the truth?

God knows not of your plans to change His Will. The universe remains unheeding of the laws by which you thought to govern it. And Heaven has not bowed to hell, nor life to death. You can but choose to think you die, or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. What is created is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is unalterable cannot change. And what is wholly sinless cannot sin.

Such is the simple truth. It does not make appeal to might nor triumph. It does not command obedience, nor seek to prove how pitiful and futile your attempts to plan defenses which would alter it. It merely wants to give you happiness, for such its purpose is. Perhaps it sighs a little when you throw away its gifts, and yet it knows with perfect certainty that what God wills for you must be received.

It is this fact which demonstrates that time is an illusion. For it lets you think what God has given you is not the truth right now, as it must be. The Thoughts of God are quite apart from time. For time is but another meaningless defence you made against the truth. Yet what God wills is here, and you remain as He created you.

Truth has a power far beyond defence, for no illusions can remain where it has been allowed to enter. And it comes to any mind that would lay down its arms and cease to play with folly. It is found at any time; today, if you will choose to practice giving welcome to the truth. This is our aim today. And we will give a quarter of an hour twice to ask the truth to come to us and set us free.

And truth will come, for it has never been apart from us. It merely waits for just this invitation which we give today. We introduce it with a healing prayer to help us rise above defensiveness, and let the truth be as it has always been:
“Sickness is a defence against the truth.
I will accept the truth of what I am,
And let my mind be wholly healed today.”
Healing will flash across your open mind as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal and keep defended from the light of truth. There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey.

Now is the body healed because the source of sickness has been opened to relief. And you will recognize you practiced well by this; the body should not feel at all. If you have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or feeling well, of pain or pleasure. No response at all is in the mind to what the body does. Its usefulness remains and nothing more.

Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body’s health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible.

Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgement or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick. Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer. Do not be confused about what must be healed, but tell yourself:
“I have forgotten what I really am,
For I mistook my body for myself.
Sickness is a defence against the truth,
But I am not a body. And my mind
Cannot attack. So I can not be sick.”

Saturday, May 15, 2010

ACIMLesson 135 If I defend myself I will be attacked.

Lesson 135
“If I defend myself I am attacked.”

Who would defend himself unless he thought he was attacked, that the attack is real, and that his own defence can save himself? And herein lies the folly of defence; it gives illusions full reality, and then attempts to handle them as real. It adds illusions to illusions, thus making correction doubly difficult.

And it is this you do when you attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or organize the present as you wish. You operate from the belief you must protect yourself from what is happening, because it must contain what threatens you. A sense of threat is an acknowledgment of an inherent weakness; a belief that there is danger which has power to call on you to make appropriate defence.

The world is based on this insane belief. And all its structures, all its thoughts and doubts, its penalties and heavy armaments, its legal definitions and its codes, its ethics and its leaders and its gods, all serve but to preserve its sense of threat. For no-one walks the world in armature but must have terror striking at his heart.

Defence is frightening. It stems from fear, increasing fear as each defence is made. You think it offers safety. Yet it speaks of fear made real and terror justified. Is it not strange you do not pause to ask, as you elaborate your plans and make your armor thicker and your locks more tight, what you defend, and how, and against what?

Let us consider first what you defend. It must be something that is very weak and easily assaulted. It must be something made easy prey, unable to protect itself, and needing your defence. What but the body has such frailty that constant care and watchful, deep concern is needful to protect its little life? What but the body falters and must fail to serve the Son of God as worthy host?

Yet it is not the body that can fear, nor be a thing to fear. It has no need but those which you assign to it. It needs no complicated structures of defence, no health-inducing medicine, no care and no concern at all. Defend its life, or give it gifts to make it beautiful or walls to make it safe, and you but say your home is open to the thief of time, corruptible and crumbling, so unsafe it must be guarded with your very life.

Is not this picture fearful? Can you be at peace with such a concept of your home? Yet what endowed the body with the right to serve you thus except your own belief? It is your mind which gave the body all the functions that you see in it, and set its value far beyond a little pile of dust and water. Who would make defence of something that he recognized as this?

The body is in need of no defence. This cannot be too often emphasized. It will be strong and healthy if the mind does not abuse it by assigning it to roles it cannot fill, to purposes beyond its scope, and to exalted aims which it cannot accomplish. Such attempts, ridiculous yet deeply cherished, are the sources for the many mad attacks you make upon it. For it seems to fail your hopes, your needs, your values and your dreams.

The “self ” that needs protection is not real. The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defence, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?

Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. And you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart from other minds and separate from its Source.

These are the thoughts in need of healing, and the body will respond with health when they have been corrected and replaced with truth. This is the body’s only real defence. Yet is this where you look for its defence? You offer it protection of a kind from which it gains no benefit at all, but merely adds to your distress of mind. You do not heal, but merely take away the hope of healing, for you fail to see where hope must lie if it be meaningful.

A healed mind does not plan. It carries out the plans which it receives through listening to Wisdom that is not its own. It waits until it has been taught what should be done, and then proceeds to do it. It does not depend upon itself for anything except its adequacy to fulfill the plans assigned to it. It is secure in certainty that obstacles can not impede its progress to accomplishment of any goal which serves the greater plan established for the good of everyone.

A healed mind is relieved from the belief that it must plan, although it cannot know the outcome which is best, the means by which it is achieved, nor how to recognize the problem that the plan is made to solve. It must misuse the body in its plans until it recognizes this is so. But when it has accepted this as true, then is it healed, and lets the body go.

Enslavement of the body to the plans the unhealed mind sets up to save itself must make the body sick. It is not free to be a means of helping in a plan which far exceeds its own protection, and which needs its service for a little while. In this capacity is health assured. For everything the mind employs for this will function flawlessly, and with the strength that has been given it and cannot fail.

It is, perhaps, not easy to perceive that self-initiated plans are but defenses, with the purpose all of them were made to realize. They are the means by which a frightened mind would undertake its own protection at the cost of truth. This is not difficult to realize in some forms which these self-deceptions take, for the denial of reality is very obvious. Yet planning is not often recognized as a defence.

The mind engaged in planning for itself is occupied in setting up control of future happenings. It does not think that it will be provided for unless it makes its own provisions. Time becomes a future emphasis, to be controlled by learning and experience obtained from past events and previous beliefs. It overlooks the present, for it rests on the idea the past has taught enough to let the mind direct its future course.

The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change. What it has learned before becomes the basis for its future goals. Its past experience directs its choice of what will happen. And it does not see that here and now is everything it needs to guarantee a future quite unlike the past, without a continuity of any old ideas and sick beliefs. Anticipation plays no part at all, for present confidence directs the way.

Defenses are the plans you undertake to make against the truth. Their aim is to select what you approve, and disregard what you consider incompatible with your beliefs of your reality. Yet what remains is meaningless indeed. For it is your reality which is the “threat” that your defenses would attack, obscure, and take apart and crucify.

What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal life.

Your present trust in Him is the defence which promises a future undisturbed, without a trace of sorrow, and with joy which constantly increases as this life becomes a holy instant, set in time, but heeding only immortality. Let no defenses but your present trust direct the future, and this life becomes a meaningful encounter with the truth that only your defenses would conceal.

Without defenses, you become a light which Heaven gratefully acknowledges to be its own. And it will lead you on in ways appointed for your happiness according to the ancient plan, begun when time was born. Your followers will join their light with yours, and it will be increased until the world is lighted up with joy. And gladly will our brothers lay aside their cumbersome defenses which availed them nothing, and could only terrify.

We will anticipate that time today with present confidence, for this is part of what was planned for us. We will be sure that everything we need is given us for our accomplishment of this today. We make no plans for how it will be done, but realize that our defencelessness is all that is required for the truth to dawn upon our minds with certainty.

For fifteen minutes twice today we rest from senseless planning, and from every thought which blocks the truth from entering our minds. Today we will receive instead of plan, that we may give instead of organize. And we are given truly, as we say:
“If I defend myself I am attacked.
But in defencelessness I will be strong,
And I will learn what my defenses hide.”
Nothing but that. If there are plans to make, you will be told of them. They may not be the plans you thought were needed, nor indeed the answers to the problems which you thought confronted you. But they are answers to another kind of question, which remains unanswered yet in need of answering until the Answer comes to you at last.

All your defenses have been aimed at not receiving what you will receive today. And in the light and joy of simple truth, you will but wonder why you ever thought that you must be defended from release. Heaven asks nothing. It is hell that makes extravagant demands for sacrifice. You give up nothing in these times today when undefended you present yourself to your Creator as you really are.

He has remembered you. Today we will remember Him. For this is Easter time in your salvation. And you rise again from what was seeming death and hopelessness. Now is the light of hope reborn in you, for now you come without defence to learn the part for you within the plan of God. What little plans or magical beliefs can still have value, when you have received your function from the Voice of God Himself?

Try not to shape this day as you believe would benefit you most. For you can not conceive of all the happiness that comes to you without your planning. Learn today. And all the world will take this giant stride, and celebrate your Easter time with you. Throughout the day, as foolish little things appear to raise defensiveness in you and tempt you to engage in weaving plans, remind yourself this is a special day for learning, and acknowledge it with this:
“This is my Easter time. And I would keep
It holy. I will not defend myself,
Because the Son of God needs no defence
Against the truth of his Reality.”

Friday, May 14, 2010

ACIM Lesson 134 Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.

Lesson 134
“Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.”

Let us review the meaning of “forgive,” for it is apt to be distorted and to be perceived as something which entails an unfair sacrifice of righteous wrath, a gift unjustified and undeserved, and a complete denial of the truth. In such a view, forgiveness must be seen as mere eccentric folly, and this course appear to rest salvation on a whim.

This twisted view of what forgiveness means is easily corrected when you can accept the fact that pardon is not asked for what is true. It must be limited to what is false. It is irrelevant to everything except illusions. Truth is God’s creation, and to pardon this is meaningless. All truth belongs to Him, reflects His laws and radiates His Love. Does this need pardon? How can you forgive the sinless and eternally benign?

The major difficulty that you find in genuine forgiveness on your part is that you still believe you must forgive the truth and not illusions. You conceive of pardon as a vain attempt to look past what is there; to overlook the truth in an unfounded effort to deceive yourself by making an illusion true. This twisted viewpoint but reflects the hold that the idea of sin retains as yet upon your mind as you regard yourself.

Because you think your sins are real, you look on pardon as deception. For it is impossible to think of sin as true and not believe forgiveness is a lie. Thus is forgiveness really but a sin, like all the rest. It says the truth is false, and smiles on the corrupt as if they were as blameless as the grass; as white as snow. It is delusional in what it thinks it can accomplish. It would see as right the plainly wrong; the loathsome as the good.

Pardon is no escape in such a view. It merely is a further sign that sin is unforgivable, at best to be concealed, denied, or called another name, for pardon is a treachery to truth. Guilt can not be forgiven. If you sin, your guilt is everlasting. Those who are forgiven from the view their sins are real are pitifully mocked and twice condemned; first by themselves for what they think they did, and once again by those who pardon them.

It is sin’s unreality that makes forgiveness natural and wholly sane, a deep relief to those who offer it; a quiet blessing where it is received. It does not countenance illusions, but collects them lightly, with a little laugh, and gently lays them at the feet of truth. And there they disappear entirely.

Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, “My brother, what you think is not the truth.”

The strength of pardon is its honesty, which is so uncorrupted that it sees illusions as illusions, not as truth. It is because of this that it becomes the undeceiver in the face of lies, the great restorer of the simple truth. By its ability to overlook what is not there, it opens up the way to truth, which had been blocked by dreams of guilt.

Now are you free to follow in the way your true forgiveness opens up to you. For if one brother has received this gift of you, the door is open to yourself. There is a very simple way to find the door to true forgiveness, and perceive it open wide in welcome. When you feel that you are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form, do not allow your mind to dwell on what you think he did, for this is self-deception. Ask instead, “Should I accuse myself of doing this?”

Thus will you see alternatives for choice in terms which render choosing meaningful, and keep your mind as free of guilt and pain as God Himself intended it to be, and as it is in truth. It is but lies which would condemn. In truth is innocence the only thing there is. Forgiveness stands between illusions and the truth, between the world you see and that which lies beyond, between the hell of guilt and Heaven’s gate.

Across this bridge, as powerful as Love Which laid Its blessing on it, are all dreams of evil and of hatred and attack brought silently to truth. They are not kept to swell and bluster, and to terrify the foolish dreamer who believes in them. He has been gently wakened from his dream by understanding what he thought he saw was never there. And now he cannot feel that all escape has been denied to him.

He does not have to fight to save himself. He does not have to kill the dragons which he thought pursued him. Nor need he erect the heavy walls of stone and iron doors he thought would make him safe. He can remove the ponderous and useless armor made to chain his mind to fear and misery. His step is light, and as he lifts his foot to stride ahead, a star is left behind to point the way to those who follow him.

Forgiveness must be practiced for the world cannot perceive its meaning, nor provide a guide to teach you its beneficence. There is no thought in all the world which leads to any understanding of the laws it follows, nor the Thought which it reflects. It is as alien to the world as is your own reality. And yet it joins your mind with the reality in you.

Today we practice true forgiveness that the time of joining be no more delayed. For we would meet with our Reality in freedom and in peace. Our practicing becomes the footsteps lightening up the way for all our brothers, who will follow us to the Reality we share with them.
That this may be accomplished, let us give a quarter of an hour twice today, and spend it with the Guide Who understands the meaning of forgiveness, and was sent to us to teach it. Let us ask of Him:
“Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.”
Then choose one brother as He will direct, and catalogue his “sins,” as one by one they cross your mind. Be certain not to dwell on any one of them, but realize that you are using his “offenses” but to save the world from all ideas of sin. Briefly consider all the evil things you thought of him, and each time ask yourself “Would I condemn myself for doing this?”

Let him be freed from all the thoughts you had of sin in him. And now you are prepared for freedom. If you have been practicing thus far in willingness and honesty, you will begin to sense a lifting up, a lightening of weight across your chest, a deep and certain feeling of relief. The time remaining should be given to experiencing the escape from all the heavy chains you sought to lay upon your brother, which were laid upon yourself.

Forgiveness should be practiced through the day, for there will be so many times when you forget its meaning, and attack yourself. When this occurs, allow your mind to see through this illusion as you tell yourself:
“Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.
Should I accuse myself of doing this?
I will not lay this chain upon myself.”
In everything you do remember this:
“No-one is crucified alone, and yet
No-one can enter Heaven by himself.”

Thursday, May 13, 2010

ACIM Lesson 133 I will not value what is valueless.

Lesson 133
“I will not value what is valueless.”

Sometimes in teaching there is benefit, particularly after you have gone through what seems theoretical and quite remote from what the student has already learned, to bring him back to practical concerns. This we will do today. We will not speak of lofty, world-encompassing ideas, but dwell instead on benefits to you.

You do not ask too much of life, but far too little. When you let your mind be drawn to bodily concerns, to things you buy, to eminence as valued by the world, you ask for sorrow, not for happiness. This course does not attempt to take from you the little that you have. It does not try to substitute utopian ideas for satisfactions which the world contains.

There are no satisfactions in the world. Today we list the real criteria by which to test all things you think you want. Unless they meet these sound requirements, they are not worth desiring at all, for they can but replace what offers more.

The laws which govern choice you cannot make, no more than you can make alternatives from which to choose. The choosing you can do; indeed you must. But it is wise to learn the laws you set in motion when you choose, and what alternatives you choose between. We have already stressed there are but two, however many there appear to be.

The range is set, and this we cannot change. It would be most ungenerous to you to let alternatives be limitless, and thus delay your final choice until you had considered all of them in time, and not been brought so clearly to the place where there is but one choice that must be made.

Another kindly and related law is that there is no compromise in what your choice must bring. It cannot give you just a little, for there is no in between. Each choice you make brings everything to you or nothing. Therefore, if you learn the tests by which you can distinguish everything from nothing, you will make the better choice.

First, if you choose a thing that will not last forever, what you chose is valueless. A temporary value is without all value. Time can never take away a value that is real. What fades and dies was never there, and makes no offering to him who chooses it. He is deceived by nothing in a form he thinks he likes.

Next, if you choose to take a thing away from someone else, you will have nothing left. This is because when you deny his right to everything, you have denied your own. You therefore will not recognize the thing you really have, denying they are there. Who seeks to take away has been deceived by the illusion loss can offer gain. Yet loss must offer loss and nothing more.

Your next consideration is the one on which the others rest. Why is the choice you make of value to you? What attracts your mind to it? What purpose does it serve? Here it is easiest of all to be deceived, for what the ego wants it fails to recognize. It does not even tell the truth as it perceives it, for it needs to keep the halo which it
uses to protect its goals from tarnish and from rust, that you may see how innocent it is.

Yet is its camouflage a thin veneer which could deceive but those who are content to be deceived. Its goals are obvious to anyone who cares to look for them. Here is deception doubled, for the one who is deceived will not perceive that he has merely failed to gain. He will believe that he has served the ego’s hidden goals. And though
he tries to keep its halo clear within his vision, yet must he perceive its tarnished edges and its rusted core.

His ineffectual mistakes appear as sins to him because he looks upon the tarnished as his own; the rust a sign of deep unworthiness within himself. He who would still preserve the ego’s goals and serve them as his own makes no mistakes according to the dictates of his guide. This guidance teaches it is error to believe that sins are but
mistakes, for who would suffer for his sins if this were so?

And so we come to the criterion for choice which is the hardest to believe, because its obviousness is overlaid with many levels of obscurity. If you feel any guilt about your choice, you have allowed the ego’s goals to come between the real alternatives, and thus you do not realize there are but two. And the alternative you think you chose seems fearful and too dangerous to be the nothingness it actually is.

All things are valuable or valueless, worthy or not of being sought at all, entirely desirable or not worth the slightest effort to obtain. Choosing is easy just because of this. Complexity is nothing but a screen of smoke which hides the very simple fact that no decision can be difficult.

What is the gain to you in learning this? It is far more than merely letting you make choices easily and without pain. Heaven Itself is reached by empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own. We will attempt to reach this state today, with self-deception laid aside, and with an honest willingness to value but the truly valuable and the real.
Our two extended practice periods of fifteen minutes will begin with this:
“I will not value what is valueless,
And only what has value do I seek,
For only that do I desire to find.”
And then receive what waits for everyone who reaches, unencumbered, to the gate of Heaven, which swings open as he comes. Should you begin to let yourself collect some needless burdens, or believe you see some difficult decisions facing you, be quick to answer with this simple thought:
“I will not value what is valueless,
For what is valuable belongs to me.”

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

ACIM Lesson 132 I loose the world from all I thought it was.

Lesson 132
“I loose the world from all I thought it was.”

What keeps the world in chains but your beliefs? And what can save the world except your Self? Belief is powerful indeed. The thoughts you hold are mighty, and illusions are as strong in their effects as is the truth. A madman thinks the world he sees is real and does not doubt it. Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thoughts’ effects. It is but when their source is raised to question that the hope of freedom comes to him at last.

Yet is salvation easily achieved, for anyone is free to change his mind, and all his thoughts change with it. Now the source of thought has shifted, for to change your mind means you have changed the source of all ideas you think or ever thought or yet will think.

You free the past from what you thought before. You free the future from all ancient thoughts of seeking what you do not want to find. The present now remains the only time. Here in the present is the world set free. For as you let the past be lifted and release the future from your ancient fears, you find escape and give it to the world.

You have enslaved the world with all your fears, with doubts and miseries, your pain and tears, and all your sorrows press upon it and keep it a prisoner to your beliefs. Death strikes it everywhere because you hold the bitter thought of death within your mind. The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them
and think them real.

Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly.

Ideas leave not their source. This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind. But it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself, impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance
to think it is.

There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.
But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn there is no world, and can accept the lesson now. Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize. Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world. And some will find it in this course, and in the exercises that we do today. Today’s idea is true because the world does not exist. And if it is indeed your own imagining, then you can loose it from all things you ever thought it was by merely changing all the thoughts that gave it these appearances. The sick are healed as you let go all thoughts of sickness, and the dead arise when you let thoughts of life replace all thoughts you ever held of death.

A lesson earlier repeated once must now be stressed again, for it contains the firm foundation for today’s idea. You are as God created you. There is no place where you can suffer, and no time that can bring change to your eternal state. How can a world of time and place exist if you remain as God created you?

What is the lesson for today except another way of saying that to know your Self is the salvation of the world? To free the world from every kind of pain is but to change your mind about yourself. There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and you maintain the world within your mind in thought.

Yet if you are as God created you, you cannot think apart from Him, nor make what does not share His timelessness and love. Are these inherent in the world you see? Does it create like Him? Unless it does, it is not real and cannot be at all. If you are real the world you see is false, for God’s creation is unlike the world in every way. And as it was His Thought by which you were created, so it is your thoughts which made it and must set it free, that you may know the Thoughts you share with God.

Release the world! Your real creations wait for this release to give you fatherhood, not of illusions, but as God in truth. God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son, for He makes no distinctions in what is Himself and what is still Himself. What He creates is not apart from Him, and nowhere does the Father end, the Son begin as something separate from Him.

There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere? Deny illusions, but accept the truth. Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world. Release your mind, and you will look upon a world released.

Today our purpose is to free the world from all the idle thoughts we ever held about it, and about all living things we see upon it. They can not be there; no more than we. For we are in the home our Father set for us along with them. And we who are as He created us would loose the world this day from every one of our illusions, that
we may be free.

Begin the fifteen minute periods in which we practice twice today with this:
“I who remain as God created me
Would loose the world from all I thought it was.
For I am real because the world is not,
And I would know my own reality.”
Then merely rest, alert but with no strain, and let your mind in quietness be changed so that the world is freed along with you.

You need not realize that healing comes to many brothers far across the world as well as to the ones you see near by, as you send out these thoughts to bless the world. But you will sense your own release, although you may not fully understand as yet that you could never be released alone.

Throughout the day, increase the freedom sent through your ideas to all the world, and say whenever you are tempted to deny the power of your simple change of mind:

“I loose the world from all I thought it was,
And choose my own reality instead.”

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

May 1, 2010 Raj, ACIM Study Group Transcript www. nwffacim.org.

May 1, 2010 ©NWFFACIM

RAJ. Good evening. … … And welcome to Every One Who’s joining Us on the Internet. … … Tonight will be a … departure from the usual, and I … won’t be reading from the Course.

There are some things I need to … share. … And so, before We do that, let’s still take some … time to be together, quietly. … …
[Quiet Time]

O-kay. Good evening again. … … … It’s really a rather simple … lesson … that We’re all … in the middle of, … and that We’ve been discussing.

We’ve called it different things: the two-step, … … hesitation, … going into the Stillness, … going into the Void, … abandoning thinking. …

One of the things … Paul has become aware of, … more clearly than ever before, … in the last three weeks since We were together, is that … … when He is thinking, … He’s not speaking with Me. … He’s not consciously, let’s say, connected with the Holy Spirit either. … And He’s not reaching out … to the Father. He is self-sufficiently … attending to … … figuring things out, … … attending to … saving His ass, … protecting Himself. … Ensuring Himself that He won’t be vulnerable. … …

Now, here’s the simplicity of it: … … When one is thinking, and is unJoined, in other words, not engaged in … active companionship … with the Holy Spirit, or with Me, or with the Father, … one is … no different from a toaster that’s not plugged in … to the socket. …

It sits there. … It looks like a toaster. … If You put the toast in and push it down, … it looks like it must be toasting … the bread. But nothing is happening, … and nothing can actually happen. … …

There have been things requiring Paul’s attention, … … just as there are things that require … Your attention, and have, let’s say, during the past three weeks. And in many instances Paul immediately began to engage in … figuring out how to cope with … those issues, those things.

And He could come up with different scenarios and different solutions, … and be concerned about whether they would really work and which one was the right one, and so on, … … and He suddenly realized: My God! … I’m thinking. I’m not Joined. I’m not Listening. Therefore, … all that’s going on in My mind … … is meaningless. … …

He came up with a little phrase, … which He would use whenever He realized He was beginning to think, … of had been thinking. He would say, quote: ‘But I still don’t have the answer.’ Unquote … … ‘But I don’t have the answer.’ … …

A fear would come up. He would be attracted to it. He would think it- … He would think about it, and, maybe spend half an hour, seriously … considering it. … And then, … remember and say: … ‘But I don’t have the answer.’

Not only did He realize He didn’t have the answer, … He realized that He couldn’t possibly have the answer … as a result of thinking, and that it was futile … for Him to do this thinking process that His whole life had taught Him to do … rather well. Intelligently. Reasonably.

And, therefore, … the only solution … was to take whatever the question was – whatever the need was – to Me, … or to the Holy Spirit, and ask for the answer.

You know what? … … You all love the mystery. … You all love the not-knowing. … You all love … the process of … discovering. … You all love the anticipation … of the answer that will come to You. … … And … the fact is, You feel it would be utterly dull to immediately have the answer, … and immediately know… exactly what to do, or exactly what the Truth about the situation … is.

Where would the fun of dis- discovery be? Where would the … mysteriousness be. Where would the wondering be. Then, of course, … then You could play on words: the wonder … of the answer. The wonder, the awesomeness of it. … ..

Well, wondering and wonder are two different words, with two- do- two different meanings.

Wondering is not knowing. wondering is being ignorant. And to enjoy wondering because of the mystery of it is to make ignorance valuable, and worth embracing and engaging in. … And all the time, You still don’t have the answer.

And You still don’t have the answer because You haven’t gone to the Place where the answer is available, which is not … in the midst of Your thinking processes.

It’s in the Silence, … when You abandon all of Your best reasoning and judgment, … and You ask: … ‘What’s the Truth here?’ … … … of That Which Knows the Truth. … The Holy Spirit, That Which is nothing more than Your Right Mind. The Father, … … or the Christ,
That Which Knows the answer which has been from the beginning. And … which has … involved no variableness whatsoever. … And … the Knowledge of Which … brings You Peace, … and not … the mystery … of not-knowing, and the supposed pleasure of discovering. … …

All of this goes on in the orphan mindset, which is the unplugged toaster. … … …

So You see, the simplicity of the lesson here … is: … If You’re thinking, … nothing is happening.

If You are reasoning- if You are going through logical deductions, nothing is happening. You still … don’t have the answer.

And I promise You something. If … – suddenly – apparently in the midst of all of Your mystery and wondering, the answer comes to You, it will be because You were momentarily undefended … against the answer. You were momentarily not invested … in Your coming up with the answer. ... You were momentarily innocent … … of trying to be something You cannot be. … And the Holy Spirit … answered.

And You had the answer. And the answer … … was … Peace embodied. And the answer was … Wholeness … experienced. … And the answer was … … the capacity to be … utterly appropriate in whatever the circumstance … was that You were in at that moment.

Now, You want to be plugged in. You want to wake up. … … The simple fact is … that as long as You are thinking and not Joined, … You are unconscious! …

You say: ‘Well how could I be unconscious? I’m driving the car. I’m interacting with people. I’m conscious! … …

Are You conscious of the Truth, though? Are You conscious of … Reality … in which … sickness … is non-existent? And, … which, because You’re in the middle of it, constituted a healing for You. An instantaneous healing, in which illness disappeared! … ...

If that hasn’t happened, You are not yet conscious … of the Truth. … … You are … unconscious and nothing meaningful … is happening, except You enjoying this … fantastic experience of … the mystery of life. Ah sweet mystery of life. A beautiful song. … … You enshrine the mystery of life, and … the concept of … beauty. ... Stop it!

… … Stop enshrining … and embodying … … unconsciousness, … ignorance, … meaninglessness. …

If You don’t have the answer, … and You’re doing a lot of thinking, … remind Yourself: ‘But I don’t- I still don’t have the answer.’ … And in the reminding of Yourself of that fact, … … abandon Your independence and say: ‘Father, what is the Truth here?’ … …

Ask: ‘Holy Spirit, what is the Truth here?’

Say: ‘Jesus, … show Me the Truth. Show Me the way. … … … Share with Me the experience of Truth, not the idea of it. … I want to experience what You’re … experiencing, when You, Jesus, are not holding Yourself separate from Your Father, … … and thus You, in Your full capacity of the Christ, are able … to be Co-Creators with the Father. Help Me have that experience, so that I – in the fullness of the Christ that I am – can Co-Create with My Father, and … … Be in that Place where the Laws of God prevail! … … (And) where the sense of mystery … is no more. … … …

The boredom … of not having … … answers to discover … doesn’t constitute a loss of any kind, because … it puts You … in direct communion with … unseparated … Oneness with God. …

And You therefore, stand with God … in the Movement of Creation that God is Be-ing, so that You discover and experience what God is Be-ing, brand-new in every moment; and are free to acknowledge It as What It Is. And not be confused about It, and not need to go through a- a process of mystery in order to arrive … … at an experience of What It Is.

And so, (small laugh) it’s far from boring. … … …‘

But of course … it doesn’t involve any ego processes of becoming … … which actually constitute an absence of meaning; toast not getting toasted, actually. … … … And You being … unconscious when ... what You want is to be conscious.

So, … … You know You … have situations in Your life, … and … You think: ‘Oh, well a miracle is a sudden shift of perception.’ And You think: ‘Oh! Well it’ll be a shift of perception from this kind of experience to this kind of experience in the world; from a- a lesser situation to a better situation.

No! The shift is from being unconscious to being conscious. … The shift is from … … thinking … to Listening. The shift is from isolation … to … Unity – Joining, … Togetherness. … … The shift is from emptiness … … to Fullness or Wholeness. … …

The Simplicity … escapes Every One … … because there is great faith in the power of thought. The- You have great faith in Your capacity to think. … … You know what? … None of the great discoveries … in history were the result of thought. They were always the result – or presence of insight. Nothing else. … …

Insight is what You need to be valuing, not thought-processes! … … An innocent mind, … … unconditioned … needs to be valued, … more than an educated mind that has taught how to be very specifically orderly in very specific ways; bound, … not free! … Not available for Revelation. And I promise You, Revelation … goes beyond concepts.

The Movement of God goes beyond thoughts! … It goes beyond orderlinesses, … intellectual orderlinesses. … …

It’s utterly … original. It doesn’t fit in anywhere. … … … You see? … …

The lesson is simple. … … The place where We are, … in the process – You might say – of Awakening, is a place of great simplicity now. It’s like being at the last step. There’s only one more thing to do … now. We can read … through the rest of the Course, … and We probably will, or We might not. … …

But the point is … … that You’re at the step of being able to recognize what the issue is, the simplicity of it … … … and doing it. … …

When You learn how to do meditation, … You have … something to give Your attention to: a mantra, the flame of a candle, a mandala, … Your breath. …

And when You find Yourself what? Beginning to think, You remind Yourself to come back to … the breath, … or the flame, … or the mandala, or the mantra.

Well, … You at a point in Life … where Life Itself is this choice, this same … … meditational choice I might say, … … … where You have to notice when You’ve started thinking, so that You might say: ‘No! I still don’t have the answer and never will have it this way. I’m gonna go back to what? Thinking more? Better? No. The Silence and … attentiveness called Listening.’ … … …

And actually … allowing for engagement in Communion, communication, dialogue with the Holy Spirit, or Me, or the Father!

It’s not just a matter of being still. … … It’s not just a matter of not thinking. It’s a matter … of … stopping the thinking, which preoccupies You from … being attentive to Something outside Yourself, beyond Your thinking. And there- And thereby, … positioning You … so that You might … experience … the loss of … independence … and the experience of Brotherhood … … and Communion with That Which can … share the Truth with You, so that You no longer … … indulge in the mystery of life. … …

Every One loves a mystery. … Well stop … loving … a mystery. … … … Be uh … Be willing to be grounded, … and stable enough, to want to know the answer that ends the mystery, ends the wondering, … and which might, therefore, seem … boring to You, … or uninteresting. … … …

You’ve all got to get past the desire for stimulation, … even the stimulation of fear, which is part and parcel … of the mystery.

You want to discover it, but what if You don’t discover it? What if You don’t discover it in time. Oh, You need the mystery to end! It’s fantastic to have the mystery, but, you know, how’re You gonna pay the bill … … on the twenty-second, and it’s only th- and it’s the eighteenth today?

Oh boy! The mystery’s getting really interesting! … … … …

Hey! … Why not listen for the answer on the first? … … … No mystery, but ease and peace, … and the capacity to be joyful. … … because You’re not engaged … in the … details of the mystery.

Remember, if You’re thinking, You’re unconscious. … … You’re unconscious because You’re not Joined with That Which holds the Answer. And ultimately that means that You’re not joined with the Holy Spirit, Which has the answer; Which is nothing more than Your Right Mind. … And so You are disjointed from Your Right Mind. … You’re unjoined with … Your Right Mind You’re therefore, … experiencing some form of insanity.

This is the simplicity … of where We are … in the learning. … … This is the point where We are in … … … the discovery of real meaning, … that means something … significantly enough … to warrant risking the chance that if You stop thinking, … … You might come back into Your Right Mind, … … … and for It to seem practically realistic enough to do it, to do it. … … …

There is a point … You will all come to … … where it will no longer be fun to be engaged in the mystery, … … where the mystery will … feel exhausting, … where the ignorance … will be so depressing … that You’re going to finally say: ‘Uncle!’ and Listen.

Don’t … wait for that. … … There’s no need. … …But You are going to have to … dare to … get up in the morning and … go through … Your day, … as You have for many, many days, year in and year out, let Us say; and all of Your Friends have been doing every day, day in and day out … for years, … and- and Be … in the Flow … from a new vantage point. Not doing it the old way. Not doing it the way Every One else is, because today: now, now, now, now, You are choosing to Listen. … You are choosing to be Joined and in dialogue with Your Guide. In dialogue with the Holy Spirit Whose … whole intent … is to cause You to remember Yourself … in Your Wholeness, as the Holy Son or Daughter of God that You are.

The Holy Spirit is nothing more than Your Right Mind. And Your Right Mind has one intent, and that is to bring You consciously into It, … so that You’re not trying to operate from a fragmented tiny part that You are imagining imaginatively to hold separate … from the Totality of Your Right Mind.

Your Right Mind … is intent upon … breaking down the boundary around this fragmented little part, … that You’re trying to hold in place … because of the mystery of life, … … and how involving … and exciting and interesting … … and beautiful it is! …

You see? … … …

You need to be able to get up every day, … … and as You’re driving … to work, and You see everything, You say: ‘But I still don’t have the answer!’ You see, meaning: ‘But I’m still not seeing ... this movement: … traffic, people, … etc., … as the Movement of Creation. I’m not seeing it … the way God is seeing it. Therefore, I don’t have the answer!

‘Therefore, I’m not … conscious right now, even though I’m quite capable of maneuvering … in and out of this traffic safely, … without injuring Myself or Anyone else. And I can manage to get to work, and punch in on time, … not be late, … … take care of business, and on and on.’

When You … punch in, … are You doing it by Yourself? … … Or … did You and the Holy Spirit do it together, … with maybe a certain Grace and Beauty, because all Movement is the Movement of Life, which is the Movement of Love, which is … Art … in action. … …

When You walk down the stairs, … … is it methodical and mechanical? Is it … strict and careful, or is it there Grace to it, … like a ballet? … … Because it is a Movement of Life. It is a Movement of Be-ing. It is … a Movement of Art, if You are connected, if You are Joined.

And if You’re not having that experience, You’re unconscious … … … of the Truth. You’re unconscious of … the Kingdom of Heaven, right there in the stairwell, right there on the Freeway. … … …

So, … … … let there be this … constant impulse to listen … in the middle of a business conference, … in the middle of a telephone conversation, … whether it’s a business conversation or a personal conversation with a Friend.

Don’t just assume that You know Who You are and You know Who Your Friend is, and therefore, … You don’t have to be conscious, because the two of You can just rattle off together and do the most … marvelous processes of- of friendship without ever being conscious … of the Holy Son or Daughter of God You’re talking to and that You are. … … Where there’s … no consciousness of Glory … in it.

If there isn’t, You’re unconscious of what is there to be experienced. … … … …

‘But I don’t have the answer yet. … … I don’t have the Fullness of the Experience yet. And I want It, so I will not settle for being unconscious. I will not settle for continuing to think this thing through. And I will shut up … and become … curiously … attentive.

And I will ask … for clarity to be provided. … …

And That of You which has the answer will provide it, and bring You, therefore, into … the Wholeness of Your Be-ing, … by reminding You of what You already know, but which You forgot, in the great attraction to the mystery of life, … and the wondering, … and the pleasure … … of figuring out the answers for Yourself. … … … … …

So, this week, watch it. If You find Yourself ... beginning to get flowery ... in Your spiritual concepts and Your language with Your Friends when it comes to talking about the Truth. Or even … the resolving problems; … .. and You’re relying upon past memories and- and ways of presenting ideas, which You have come to the conclusion are excellent ways of stimulating … spiritual discovery, … catch Yourself! Because You are unconscious. You’re not Joined. You’re not Listening. You’re not letting what You’re saying come from Someplace other than … Your conditioning and Your memory.

You’re not letting it come from the Freshness of the Communication of God, or the Freshness of the Communication of the Holy Spirit, Which is revealing to You what God is Be-ing, in that moment, so that what You say is really inspired, because You are plugged in, and the Current is there: the Current of Reality, the Current of Creation. … … … … …

… Now, … … a- as You come close to this … realization … of the Simplicity, and it is simply a matter of stopping this and starting that: becoming still … and stopping thinking, and starting Listening, You will seem to find that there are more occasions to be concerned. There will be more issues.

Now it isn’t because there truly are more issues, … but it will be because – in the process … of, for lack of better words, turning things over to the Holy Spirit – in other words, …turning to the Holy Spirit – asking of the Holy Spirit with the intent of being consciously present Listening in order to hear the Holy Spirit, … … You put Yourself in the position of having many more answers than You ever dreamed of.

You will take more needs, more issues … to the Holy Spirit for answers. And … pretty soon You’ll run out – I mean really quick – … You will run out of little things to want to know the Truth about, and You will want to know the big things; the things You are positive there are not answers to. … Or answers that will be impossible for You.

And so You will find Yourself reluctant to ask … all the questions. … And You will begin to worry about the bigger things that You hadn’t looked at before, because You kept busy with the little tiny ones that it was easy to deal with.

And … … … rather than asking and Listening as though the impossible were possible, You will confirm to Yourself that it is impossible, but since You now see thought it’s on Your plate, You will feel confronted with … serious … problems, … even danger.

And it will seem totally justifiable to You to worry, to become … thoroughly engrossed … in fear, … because You know here is something, but it’s going to be impossible to deal with.

And, … when that happens, You’re in the ugly part of the mystery. And You are completely distracted … from Listening. … And You have emotional justification for staying as far away from Listening as possible, because You are called upon to what? Solve the problem Yourself.

And yet, … We’ve just been talking about the fact … that the solution comes … in the awareness that You can’t solve anything. And it’s not Your responsibility … to solve anything. … … … …

As I’ve said before, … the closer You get to the gates to the Kingdom of Heaven, the ego throws up gargoyles around … the gate, You see, to distract You and scare You off. … The gargoyles aren’t real. … They don’t represent anything valid. … But they would if they could … distract You from simply moving forward … through the gates, or across the bridge. … … Moving forward … … by virtue of the simple step of stopping thinking … … and Listening instead.

Listening with the demand, I’m going to say, for an answer. Listening with … a firm, unyielding … receptivity to and expectation of … dialogue, … communication.

Oh, I know You say: ‘Paul’s in touch with His Guide. I’m not in touch with My Guide. I listen, and I listen, and I don’t hear anything.’

Well, … I’ll tell You something. The time will come when the situation is serious enough, and You don’t feel like You have any alternative. And You will Listen. And You will hear, because You will give permission!

Why? Because when there’s no alternative, it means that You’ve given up faith in Your own capacity … to think Your way through it, successfully and experience the wonder of the mystery!

Now, … again, You don’t have to wait until … You seem to have no choice. You can make that commitment when there isn’t a dire circumstance; when You’re not at the end of Your rope.

If You’re not hearing Your Guide, … You’re simply … … not committed to hearing Your Guide. … You still feel … that You have some capacity to cope with life on the basis of Your own best judgments, and Your own thinking. And You’re going to opt for that, … thank You very much.

And You’ll listen for Your Guide at another time. …

The only thing is that the other time that You will do it is one in which it will be very uncomfortable, because circumstances will be equal to Your stubbornness. … … …

You see? One way or another, correction is going to occur. One way or another, the Holy Son … or Daughter of God that You are is going to … come forth; is going to pop into view! …

Salvation will occur! Because … this illusion … cannot endure. … It’s a fantasy. And Reality will undo it. … … But it’s no fun to be coerced … … because it always involves … a struggle with Your stubbornness; a struggle … between Your stubbornness and the Movement of God, That would have You discover that You do not have a will of Your own, truly, that can stand up against God successfully.

That is bound … to be discovered by You! And My task is to encourage You … to Let that discovery happen … voluntarily now, with curiosity! Bring to the Listening … and the desire to be Joined in everything You do. …

Let that be as interesting to You as the mystery of life, … … … and the attempt to solve it … on Your own. … … …

This week I encourage You to read … from where We left off last time, to the end of this section. … … … …

The things I’ve shared tonight have been very consistent with what’s there. … … What I shared tonight … didn’t come out of … abiding by a string of words in a certain order, ... but out of … the very nature of Life Itself, and the experience Each of You has, and the experiences Each of You will encounter; … … and the way to deal with them in a sober way, rather than … … attempting to do it in a way that constitutes unconscious behavior, which accomplishes nothing, … while at the same time believing that You are accomplishing something. … …

That illusion … has to be abandoned, willingly, gratefully, happily. … …

You know, not a One of You has to- has to read another sentence … out of the Course. I mean, … You can decide … to stop thinking, … and be Joined, and stay that way … NOW.

If You don’t do it now, You’d better read the rest of the pages. … But it’s not required. … Your Salvation … is not … at the end of a process … in time.

It lies in shifting from thinking … to Listening.

And that will always happen in the instant You’re in when it happens! It’s always going to be NOW when it happens! … …

Simplicity Itself. … … …

I Love You. … … … And I look forward to being with You next time. … … … … And value … … the recognition … that You don’t have the answer yet, … when You’re thinking, so that You can immediately … stop the thinking and get back to Listening; and reach out, in Joining, with the intent to be in … Communion. … Comradeship. …

Okay.