[Review Lessons 41-45]    

 

These Lessons are all about not relying on our own strength but remembering Who goes with us, what the Source of our real strength is, and why we would be disturbed by anything when God is with us always. How could we feel lonely, if we really got this? How could we suffer when we are surrounded by love and joy always? How can we be doubtful and unsure of ourselves when we have perfect certainty abiding in us?

We feel disturbed by things going on in our lives and we feel lonely and suffer. If Jesus were right about this being an impossibility, why do we feel like we do? Jesus gives us the answer, saying that, if we don't feel His presence, His strength and His support, we are cherishing illusions about ourselves. We are actually choosing against our own happiness. If indeed it is a choice, we can make a different choice. We want to be right about the way we see things, yet who does not want peace and happiness? When we feel attacked, we want to retaliate, yet when we do, we are choosing to throw our peace away. When we try to hold others accountable for what they are doing to us, we keep ourselves in prison with them, and this is how we cherish illusions. We stubbornly resist giving up our perceptions and letting the Holy Spirit write on the blank slate of our minds. When our minds are filled with our own cherished thoughts, there is no room for another interpretation of any situation.

The questions that are put to us in this review are meant to get us thinking about how it is indeed possible to be unhappy, distressed, worried, and lonely when " love and joy surround me through Him." (W.59.1.5) The purpose of these questions is to help us take in the truth of what is being said here. Having God within us and with us all the time is not like having some spiritual being to call on from time to time. It is to know that we are never separate and alone because the Love of God is in our minds. We are assured by Jesus that we have a choice as to whether we draw on His Love, which is in us, or continue to rely on our own mistaken interpretations of everyone and everything. We are not simply told in these Lessons to believe something that some higher authority insists is the truth. We are always encouraged to check it out for ourselves. When we bring our mistaken perceptions to the truth, we experience the peace and joy that come with forgiveness. We are being encouraged to continue to apply each Lesson on a daily basis to whatever comes up in our day that disturbs us so that we can let go of the disturbance. This Course is about application. Without applying the Lessons to our day, the words will be taken as intellectual concepts that will not help us. Daily, we are being asked to look at our mistaken thoughts with the light of the Holy Spirit where they are shined away. What this means is that we look at our thoughts with His Love beside us so we don't judge ourselves for the hate that we see in our minds.
 

When we are willing to ask for help to give up our cherished illusions about ourselves and look honestly at our judgments, we have started the process of healing. It is by not looking that our illusions are safely kept in obscurity from ourselves. Thus, they are out of reach of healing. What are these cherished illusions? They are our perspectives, our concepts, our values, our opinions, our beliefs and our perceptions. " Let me not cherish illusions about myself." (W.59.1.6) Help me to surrender, to give up, and to release all that I think on my own. It is of no value to me since all of my own thoughts are thoughts about nothing, but these are thoughts that keep us in the illusion. Our thoughts keep us in a state of suffering and lack. The truth is that we have everything. Wait a minute. If we believe this, can we truly also feel alone and miserable and depressed? Jesus reminds us that we can " exchange my [our] pitiful illusion of seeing for the vision that is given by God." (W.59.2.4) Why do we hold onto our cherished illusions, if this is the case?
   

" His attraction for you remains unlimited, but because your power, being His, is as great as His, you can turn away from love." (T.15.IX.6.3)(ACIM OE T.15.IX.90) Yes, it is our decision to turn away from love. It is an amazing thing to really appreciate the power of our minds to reject all of these gifts. Our minds are as powerful as God's because they are a part of His Mind!
 

What that means is that nothing will convince me to choose love until I find the illusion intolerable. In the interview that Mel Gibson gave about his reason for doing the movie, The Passion of Christ, he confessed that he had everything in the world---all the money, power, recognition, wife, children---everything the world had to offer, yet he was on the verge of suicide. The material world can all feel very meaningless. Behind all these worldly attractions, there is a strong pull in us for the real attraction. As we read in Lesson 231, " What can I seek for, Father, but Your Love? Perhaps I think I seek for something else; a something I have called by many names. Yet is Your Love the only thing I seek, or ever sought. For there is nothing else that I could ever really want to find." (W.231.1.1-4)

Does that mean that we give up the world? Does it mean that we no longer pursue our illusions? While we may still pursue illusion for a while, at some point disillusionment sets in and the things that seemed to have value for us no longer hold our interest. As we do this work, increasingly we see that our happiness cannot be found in the world. It is then that our attachments to the things of the world start to fall away. We increasingly recognize that we have a bigger, more irresistible attraction to something much more meaningful. We increasingly recognize the real Source of our strength, our happiness and our peace, which is within.

 " I have no thoughts I do not share with God. I have no thoughts apart from Him, because I have no mind apart from His." (W.59.5.2-3) The world arose from the idea that we could have thoughts separate from God. Now we see that, as we hold these thoughts, we maintain our misery and that is sufficient motivation to want the healing that comes through forgiveness. Thankfully, we have a way out of the hell that we have made. We can choose peace with every decision that we make. Time was made for this purpose---the purpose of healing. That is all time is for. Yes, we will make a lot of mistakes, but they are not sins. They are simply opportunities to choose again. Choice is our one remaining freedom in this world. What we are choosing in each moment is truth or illusion, Heaven or hell, attack or forgiveness, the ego or the Holy Spirit. Our grievances and mistakes just provide opportunities to choose again, and again.
 

We can't do this in a pure environment. We need the challenges and issues that come forth daily. They are our invitations to look at the ego and release our obstacles to the love that we are. What are these obstacles? Only our own thoughts! They are not real thoughts. They are thoughts in our mind, which we think are private. Yet our right mind is totally shared with the Mind of God. His Thoughts are not limited and do not limit who we really are as our ego thoughts do. God keeps no thoughts to Himself. His thoughts are in our right minds where the truth dwells in us. Our thoughts are given reality because we believe in them, but they originated with the separation. Thus, they are thoughts about nothing and have no meaning.

He truly is our strength, and vision is His gift to us. (W.59.2.1-2) He truly is our Source, and we cannot see apart from Him . (W.59.3.1-2) He truly is the light in which we see. (W.59.4.1) We ask that we may let this be the day that we might experience the truth of what we are. We can't see eternity with our physical eyes. With our eyes we only see form. God has given us the gift of real seeing, of vision. Everything that our eyes see will be gone at some point. When people have reported experiences of leaving the body and looking at it from above, obviously they see without their eyeballs, which are still in the body. In the same way, the brain does not think. When people report near death experiences, their brain is in the body they have left, but they still have perception of the experience and report it in great detail. It is clear that the bodily senses are not the mind that thinks or the eyes that see. All we have is the illusion of seeing. We might enjoy seeing beautiful scenery and lovely sunsets, but in the end it is just shape and color and has no eternal value. " God is the light in which I see." (W.59.4.1) And in this recognition I am free.
 

TEXT

⁷⁰ The continuing will to remain separated is the only possible reason for continuing guilt feelings. We have said this before, but we did not emphasize the destructive results of this decision at that time. Any decision of the mind will affect both behavior and experience. What you will, you expect. This is not delusional. Your mind does create your future, and it can turn it back to full creation at any minute if it accepts the Atonement first. It will also turn back to full creation the instant it has done so. Having given up its thought disorder, the proper ordering of thought becomes quite apparent.

 

⁷¹ God in His knowledge is not waiting, but His Kingdom is bereft while you wait. All the Sons of God are waiting for your return, just as you are waiting for theirs. Delay does not matter in eternity, but it is tragic in time. You have elected to be in time rather than eternity and have therefore changed your belief in your status. Yet your election is both free and alterable. You do not belong in time. Your place is only in eternity, where God Himself placed you forever.

 

⁷² Guilt feelings are the preservers of time. They induce fears of future retaliation or abandonment and thus ensure that the future will remain like the past. This is the ego's continuity and gives it a false sense of security through the belief that you cannot escape from it. But you can and must. God offers you the continuity of eternity in exchange. When you choose to make this exchange, you will simultaneously exchange guilt for joy, viciousness for love, and pain for peace. My role is only to unchain your will and make it free. Your ego cannot accept this freedom and will oppose your free decision at every possible moment and in every possible way. And as its maker, you recognize what it can do because you gave it the power to do it.

 

⁷³ The mind does indeed know its power because the mind does indeed know God. Remember the Kingdom always, and remember that you who are part of the Kingdom cannot be lost. The mind that was in me is in you, for God creates with perfect fairness. Let the Holy Spirit remind you always of His fairness, and let me teach you how to share it with your brothers. How else can the chance to claim it for yourself be given you? What you do not understand is that the two voices speak for different interpretations of the same thing simultaneously, or almost simultaneously, for the ego always speaks first. Alternate interpretations were unnecessary until the first one was made, and speaking itself was unnecessary before the ego was made.

 

⁷⁴ The ego speaks in judgment and the Holy Spirit reverses its decisions, much as the Supreme Court has the power to reverse the lower courts' decisions about the laws of this world. The ego's decisions are always wrong because they are based on a complete fallacy which they were made to uphold. Nothing the ego perceives is interpreted correctly. Not only does it cite Scripture for its purpose, but it even interprets Scripture as a witness for itself. The Bible is a fearful thing to the ego because of its prejudiced judgment. Perceiving it as fearful, it interprets it fearfully. Having made you afraid, you do not appeal to the Higher Court because you believe its judgment would be against you.

 

⁷⁵ We need cite only a few examples to see how the ego's interpretations have misled you. A favorite ego quotation is "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." Another is "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord." Still another is "I will visit the sins of the father unto the third and fourth generation," and also "The wicked shall perish." There are many others, but if you will let the Holy Spirit reinterpret these in His own light, they will suffice.

 

⁷⁶ "As ye sow, so shall ye reap" merely means that what you believe to be worth cultivating you will cultivate in yourself. Your judgment of what is worthy makes it worthy for you. "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord" is easily explained if you remember that ideas increase only by being shared. This quotation therefore emphasizes the fact that vengeance cannot be shared. Give it therefore to the Holy Spirit, who will undo it in you because it does not belong in your mind, which is part of God.

 

⁷⁷ "I will visit the sins of the fathers unto the third and fourth generation," as interpreted by the ego, is particularly vicious. It is used, in fact, as an attempt to guarantee its survival beyond itself. Actually, all the quotation means is that the Holy Spirit in later generations retains the power to interpret correctly what former generations have thought and thus release their thoughts from the ability to produce fear anywhere in the Sonship. "The wicked shall perish" is merely a statement of fact if the word "perish" is properly understood. Every loveless thought must be undone. Even the word "undone" is fearful to the ego, which interprets "I am undone" as "I am destroyed."

 

⁷⁸ The ego will not be destroyed because it is part of your thought, but because it is uncreative and therefore unsharing, it will be reinterpreted entirely to release you from fear. The part of your thought which you have given to the ego will merely return to the Kingdom, where your whole mind belongs. The ego is a form of arrest, but arrest is merely delay. It does not involve the concept of punishment, although the ego welcomes that interpretation. You can delay the completion of the Kingdom, but you cannot introduce the concept of assault into it.

 

⁷⁹ When I said, "I am come as a light into the world," I surely came to share the light with you. Remember the symbolic reference we made before to the ego's dark glass, and remember also that we said, "Do not look there." It is still true that "where you look to find yourself is up to you." The Higher Court will not condemn you. It will merely dismiss the case against you. There can be no case against a Child of God, and every witness to guilt in God's creations is bearing false witness to God Himself.

 

⁸⁰ Appeal everything you believe gladly to God's own Higher Court because it speaks for Him and therefore speaks truly. It will dismiss the case against you, however carefully you have built it. The case may be foolproof, but it is not God-proof. The Voice for God will not hear it at all because He can only witness truly. His verdict will always be "Thine is the Kingdom" because He was given you to remind you of what you are.

 

⁸¹ Your patience with each other is your patience with yourselves. Is not a Child of God worth patience? I have shown you infinite patience because my will is that of our Father, from Whom I learned of infinite patience. His Voice was in me as it is in you, speaking for patience towards the Sonship in the name of its Creator. What you need to learn now is that only infinite patience can produce immediate effects. This is the way in which time is exchanged for eternity. Infinite patience calls upon infinite love, and by producing results now, it renders time unnecessary.

 

⁸² To say that time is temporary is merely redundant. We have repeatedly said that time is a learning device which will be abolished when it is no longer useful. The Holy Spirit, Who speaks for God in time, also knows that time is meaningless. He reminds you of this in every passing moment of time because it is His special function to return you to eternity and remain to bless your creations there. He is the only blessing you can truly give because He is so truly blessed, and because He has been given you so freely by God, you must give Him as you received Him.

                

 

ALL CONFERENCE CALL RECORDINGS on SOUNDCLOUD

Hope you will click Heart to LIKE Us 

?