A few things for me to consider: 1) everything I now believe is completely false; 2) There is only One. There appears to be many, but there is only ONE; 3) the "world" is not Real and death does not exist; 4) I am Safe in Heaven, dreaming of exile "apart from" God; 5) the part of me who believes I am separated from God is called "ego;" 6) there is no hell, only Heaven; 7) all roads lead Home, but ACIM will get me there faster; 8) the message is important, not who inspired it or who wrote it; 9) God and my job of forgiveness will help me to Awaken; 10) God's Will and mine are One.
The Direction of the Curriculum. Peace is the motivation for learning this Course. There will only be "world" Peace when there is inner Peace; Eternal inner Peace. Then the world as I know it will disappear.
Ego is an hallucination. It has no power unless I give it power. Truth merely asks me to evaluate ego, the "world," and all situations in terms of their results. If I am not entirely and Eternally Peaceful ~ which God intended me to be ~ then I may want to question my apparent "reality." If I come to this point and desire to see differently, I will have Help. If I want to continue in my unpeaceful state, then Help will wait until I change my mind. God never goes against my choice. Nothing God created opposes my will and neither does He.
Every response of ego is a call to war, and war deprives me of Peace. Yet in this war, there is no opponent, for there is nothing and no one "outside" me. Those I perceive as enemy, God uses to bring me to Peace. I give up Peace when I attack and judge "others." Ego is an expert only in confusion.
Has any choice I made in the dream-world truly brought me Happiness? The exciting new job has become a little boring after several years. The spouse I just had to marry and make babies with, does not look so appealing after a few years and a few babies. Do I really know what makes me happy? What makes me happy today is different than what made me happy yesterday. "Happiness" in the dream-world changes with my moods and circumstances, how can I trust it? My past learning and decisions have not made me happy. On this basis alone, the value of my choices should be questioned. Ego has never given me a sensible answer to anything.
If I want a different curriculum, a change is obviously necessary. A good curriculum must be consistent, it should have one goal and one teacher. There is only One Teacher who knows what my Reality is. God's Learning is Joyful and easy.
I may think I have a will different from God's. Ego convinces me that I have opposed God's Will. I may think I have impulses and desires which go against God's Will. This is false. I am in Heaven dreaming of exile to a world where God is somewhere "outside" of it. This, too, is false. My will and God's cannot be different, because they are One.
God will lead me to Freedom by helping me to look past ~ or disregard ~ everything that holds me back. He will teach me the difference between pain and Joy, and imprisonment and Freedom. I have taught myself to believe I created and exist in a world where God is remote and absent. Because God Himself gave me my Creative Powers, they are Mighty and Magnificent. Because I truly believe that I exist in a world "apart from" God, my belief creates my "reality." It is "real" insofar as my belief is concerned. I would be lost forever if I had only myself to rely on, but God Is. He uses my dream and my language and will guide me Home when I chose.
ACIM takes One direction (Truth) and has One Goal (God). God Willed my being into existence. He Created me and He Creates only like Himself, so I am like Him. God is All Power and Glory. Since I am part of God I, too, am all Power and Glory, and I am as Unlimited as He.
The Holy Encounter. Glory to God in the Highest, and to my Self because that is His Will. Ask, and it shall be given me. Knock, and the door will be opened. Everything is mine and the door is always open. Ask for Light and learn that I am Light. If I want Understanding and Enlightenment listen to Him Who Knows of It.
God's Will is not be forced on me . While I dream, I am living in a world of chaos and constant change, I do things I feel compelled to do, unable to to control myself at times. Yet a World of Peace and Joy patiently awaits my Awakening.
When I meet anyone, remember, it is always a Holy Encounter. As I see the "other," I will see myself; as I treat the "other," I will treat myself; as I think of the "other," I will think of myself. Do not forget this! In any "other" is my salvation. Whenever two shall meet, they are given yet another chance at salvation. "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." Matthew 18:20.
In the world of dreams I am looking for power and glory, status and success, riches and security. Ego believes these will replace my experience of Heaven. Heaven has never been lost to me, but so it seems in the dream. I created this world and all "others" for an experience of "separation from" God. God uses it all to teach me of salvation. My salvation is in all "others" and theirs is in me. Whenever I am with an "other," I can learn to know my Self. My brother will respond with pain or with Joy depending on which teacher I am following (ego or God). I created ego to teach me of "separation." Heaven will teach me of Unity. When I meet someone "else," I think he is "else." This is not so. I will find the Kingdom with my brother. My "brother" and I are One.
God Wills that I not suffer for a wrong decision Through His Power and Glory all my wrong decisions are completely undone, releasing me and my "brother" from every imprisoning thought that any part of the Sonship holds. Wrong decisions have no power because they are not true. Neither is the imprisonment they seem to produce.
Glory is God's Gift to me, because Glory is what God Is. I will choose to see His Glory everywhere to remember what I am: the Son of God.
The Gift of Freedom. God's Will for me is Complete Peace and Joy. Unless I experience only this, I am refusing to acknowledge His Will. When I am not at Peace, it is because I do not believe I am with God. I feel lonely and helpless because I deny God's Will, and choose to live in an illusion of isolation. Stop telling myself I am lonely! How can I be lonely if I am not alone?
The Light of God's Message does not attack my world of illusion but only Shines it away. My only problem is not acknowledging the Will of God. There will only be "world" peace when there is inner Peace. If God's Will offers Happiness, Joy, Peace, Love, Serenity, Gentleness and Wholeness Forever and Ever..........who in their right mind would turn this down? But I am not in my Right Mind.
In the Christian tradition of the dream-world, Jesus was the first to Awaken. He is my brother and equal. Together we are God's Son. His Awakening United, in the collective unconsciousness, the Will of the Father with the will of the Sonship. "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you," Luke 17:21. But ego made Jesus a god, killed him, then started a religion and completely disregarded the MESSAGE. That is what ego does.
Healing is a collaborative venture. God brings the Message, but I must trust Him and accept It. Healing reflects our joint Will. The "separation" is overcome by Union. I must make the decision for Union. The decision must be unequivocal. It is the decision between isolation or Oneness, fear or Love, illusion or Sanity, sorrow or Joy, sadness or Happiness. Oneness, Love, Sanity, Joy and Happiness; Complete and Eternal, and I do not "die" to receive It. I merely Awaken. In order to Awaken I have to choose my teacher: ego or God. Then listen for guidance.
God will not oppose my decision. He Created me with a Free Will. I am Free to dream and miscreate, yet I am also Free to Awaken. I choose. God's Will gave my will its Freedom and Power, and nothing can oppose the Will of God. God Himself would not oppose it. The Jesus-experience was an extreme experience. I do not need to be abandoned, betrayed by friends, whipped, humiliated, tortured or nailed to a cross to learn what I need to know. The cross was not the lesson. "Jesus" overcame abandonment, betrayal, humiliation, attack and death ~ not by attack, but by forgiveness ~ THAT is the lesson. I can take my small, daily humiliations and attacks.........or illusions such as genocide, natural disasters, ethnic cleansing and gang warfare. It appears there are "degrees" of illusion in the world. The point is, one illusion is no different from another in that: THEY ARE ALL ILLUSION.
I taught myself the world of illusion, Truth teaches me to Awaken.
God tells me: "If you want to be like Me I will help you....If you want to be different, I will wait until you change your mind." I can play make-believe for as long as I want. It is my choice. Freedom cannot be taught with tyranny. Perfect Equality of all God's Sons cannot be recognized through dominion of one mind over another. God's Sons are Equal.
Offer Freedom and I will find It for myself. When I seek to imprison an "other," I imprison only my own mind. I will find my Self in my brother. If I hate him, I will hate myself. If I offer forgiveness, I will forgive myself. If I offer Love, I will love myself.
The Undivided Will of the Sonship. Can I be lost in a dream of illusion, forget that I am the Son of God, yet still be at Peace? To heal is to make Whole, therefore, to heal is to Unite with Oneness. Success is guaranteed.
Whenever fear, hatred, sadness, loneliness, envy, isolation or grief intrudes anywhere along the road to Peace, it is because ego has tried to join the journey. But it cannot. Defeated and angry, it will sense rejection and attack. Ego is not the "devil" or a separate entity, it is the part of me who created ~ and wholeheartedly believes in ~ a world where fear, hatred, sadness, loneliness, envy, isolation and grief are possible; a world where "God has stepped aside." I will leave all illusions behind and reach for the hand of my brother. In my forgiveness of him, he will guide me Home.
The Treasure of God. Do not forget the Kingdom of God for anything the dream-world has to offer. If I embrace the world and all its empty promises, it will blind me from the Kingdom. If I embrace the Kingdom, the world disappears. Only one is True. Which one is True is not my choice. If it were, I would have destroyed myself long ago. My destruction is not God's Will. His Will has saved me. Not from myself, but from my illusion of myself. He saved me for my Self. Only in God's World will I be Happy. What God Creates can find Joy only in the Eternal, because nothing else is worthy.
I am like the prodigal son. The Father will welcome me Home with Great Joy, because I am His treasure. He wants nothing else. When I think I have a will that is not of God, I am not thinking straight. I cannot and do not have a Will apart from the Father. I can only be "apart from" God in dreams and illusions. If I were in my Right Mind, I would never choose a world of dreams over Heaven. Yet my thought is so Powerful that I can imprison my own mind by my own choice.
Whom God has joined cannot be separated, and God has joined His Son with Himself. The journey to God is merely the reAwakening of the Knowledge of myself as God's Son. It is a Journey Without Distance, to a Goal That Has Never Changed. Truth cannot be learned, It can only be Experienced. I can study the characteristics of Truth, but the Experience is given by God.
I begin the journey Home by my function of forgiveness. What God has Willed for me, Is and Will Always Be mine.
The Body as a Means of Communication. Attack is always physical. The physical is limited, subject to illness and ends in death. The "physical" is not of God, so the physical does not exist. But since I believe I am a "body" in a "world," I still have much learn. Learning is of the dream-world. Knowledge is of God's World. There is no need for learning in God's World.
When attack in any form enters my mind, it is because I believe I am a "body." Ego uses the body for attack. I do not have to attack physically for this to be my "reality." It seems that attack can get me what I want. If I did not believe this, the idea of attack would have no appeal for me.
When I believe myself to be a body, I will always experience depression. The body is limited, subject to illness, and ends in death. How could a Prince be Joyful living the life of a pauper? If I see my brothers as bodies, I will perceive them as negatively as myself.
God will use my miscreation (the body) as a means of Communication. He will always interpret my miscreations with Light. Ego uses the body to separate one Son from another. God uses the body to unite the Sonship. The only useful purpose the body has is offering forgiveness. Of itself, the body has no value, but God's use of it will heal the separation.
If I use the body for attack, it hurts me. If I use it to offer forgiveness, I will understand God's healing Power. I need not preach or evangelize to any "other." I will understand that it is only myself I need attend to. If I use the body in service of Reality, it will be impossible to use it for attack. In the service of Uniting, the body becomes a beautiful lesson in Communion.
Communication ends separation, attack promotes separation. The body is beautiful or ugly, peaceful or savage, helpful or harmful according to which teacher I listen to: ego or God. I will perceive other bodies the same way I perceive my own. Use the body for Truth and I will see it Truly. Misuse it and I will misunderstand it.
Loss of any kind is impossible in Truth. Yet all perceived loss comes only from misunderstanding. When I look upon another as a "body" ~ doing and saying things, giving me dirty looks, gossiping about me ~ his Power and Glory are "lost" to me, and so is my own. I will immediately become defensive, and in my defense is attack ~ angry thoughts, hurtful words, furrowed brow, raised voice. Yet I can choose to not see him this way for my own salvation. As part of me, he is Holy. As part of God, I am Holy.
Of myself I can do nothing, but I am not of myself, I am of God. He has not withdrawn Himself from me, I have withdrawn myself (into a world of illusion) from Him.
The Bible says, "Word was made flesh." Strictly speaking this is impossible, since it seems to involve the transition of one order of Reality into another. Different orders of Reality merely appear to exist. Thought is never physical, thought is Communication, yet while I experience myself as a "body," it can be used for Communication which is the only Real and Natural use for the body.
In the dream-world, not even the body is perceived as whole. Its purpose is split into many functions ~ the brain does this, the kidneys do that, the liver does this, etc. ~ with little relationship to each other, apparently ruled by chaos. Guided by ego, it is chaos. Guided by TRUTH, it is used for Communication and becomes a temple to God.
There is nothing more frustrating than trying to learn a lesson that is impossible to learn, and those are the lessons of ego. I will feel inadequate and depressed. Being faced with an impossible learning situation is the most depressing thing in the world. That is exactly why the "world" itself is depressing. The lessons the world has to teach are lessons in nothing, which can never be learned. Love's lessons are never depressing for they are lessons in Joy.
Using the body solely for Communication results in healing. Mind is Whole. The belief that part of my Self is "physical" is a fragmented, sick interpretation. Mind cannot be made physical.
Help and healing are the normal expression of a sane mind working through the body, but not in the body. If the mind believes the "body" is its reality, then it reinforces the idea of separation from God. Communication is joining, attack is separation. Attack is saying, "you are different from me, you are alien to me, I do not know you, you are fearful and dangerous." Learning must lead beyond the body to re-establish the Power of the Mind. This can be accomplished only if the mind extends to other minds and does not stop itself. The mind's thought of "separation" is the cause of all illness, because extension (or giving of Itself) is Mind's True function.
The opposite of Joy is depression (only in the dream-world can there be "opposites") and if I experience depression instead of Joy, I am listening to the wrong teacher. Healing is nothing more than Unity. To see a body as anything except a means for Communication, is to limit and hurt my mind. And in the world of illusion, a sick mind manifests itself in physical form. Apart from mind, the body has no purpose at all.
I am not limited by the body, and thought cannot be "made flesh." Whenever I see another as limited to a body, I am hurting, limiting and condemning myself. True learning should help me escape from limitations, pain, and condemnation. I have condemned myself. Condemnation is not of God, therefore it is not true and its effects are not true.
I will not allow myself to suffer from the imagined results of what is NOT TRUE. Freedom from illusions lies in not believing them. My Reality is Unlimited Communication, Power, and Wholeness. I will tap into It, by extending Love and Forgiveness. Instead of thinking of someone negatively, I will think of them with Love and Forgiveness.
The Body: Means or End? The Whole (God) defines the part (me), but the part does not define the Whole. Yet to know part of the One is to know It entirely. Perception is of the world of dreams, Knowledge is of God. In perception, the whole seems to be built up of parts that can separate and reassemble into different configurations. Knowledge never changes, so Its configuration is permanent. The idea of part-whole relationships only has meaning in this world at the level of perception where change is possible. In God's World there is no difference between the Part and the Whole.
The body does not exist, so what determines its so-called "health"? The mind. How my mind interprets the function of the body will determine the body's health. Ego uses the body for attack.
Have I noticed a key characteristic of every desire, every goal I set for myself? Whenever I receive what I desire it ceases to satisfy me. That is why ego is forced to shift ceaselessly from one goal to another so that I will continue to hope the dream-world can yet offer me something more. It strings me along with hope. Ego has a profound investment in sickness. Sickness will try to distract me with the body's "reality." Sickness preoccupies my mind with the "physical," illusory world. Sickness is a witness to the separation. Illness is an illusion. The body is an illusion. Sickness is a way of demonstrating that the "separation" is "real." It witness to my frailty, my vulnerability, and my extreme need to depend on ego. It dictates endless prescriptions for avoiding catastrophic outcomes. God is perfectly aware of ego's meaningless use of the body, but He sees the body only for Communication.
The more complicated life in the dream-world seems to be, the harder it is to recognize its nothingness. I should ask myself how the voice of something that does not exist (ego), can be so insistent. Have I thought about the distorting power of desire, even if it is not Real? There are many examples of how my desires distort perception. No one can doubt ego's skill in building up false witnesses.
When I lay ego aside, it will be gone. God teaches me to use my body only to offer forgiveness. Health is the Natural state of Everything. Health is the beginning of Right perception under the guidance of the Heaven.
Healing as Corrected Perception. What is my question? God is the Answer. When ego tempts me to perceive sickness, I will not ask for healing of the body, but for healing of perception. I do not have to seek Reality. Reality will find me.
All forms of sickness (even death) are physical/illusory expressions of fear. They are attempts to reinforce sleeping (illusions) out of the fear of Awakening (Heaven). I avoid Seeing by putting blinders on. "Rest in Peace," is a blessing for the living because rest comes from Awakening to Heaven. Sleep is withdrawing, Awakening is Joining. Complete unconsciousness is impossible. I can rest in Peace only when I am Awake. Healing overcomes the fear of Awakening. The decision to Awaken shows the willingness to Love; all healing involves replacing fear with Love.
When I limit myself, I am no longer of One mind. Limitation is sickness. Yet sickness is not of the body, but of the mind. All forms of sickness are signs that the mind is asleep.
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