We believe that we have a will, which is our own and separate from God's. This is not the truth. Our will is God's will. This Course is about releasing our own separate will and joining with that of God. We don't know our own best interests, yet we have chosen independence and willfulness and assumed authority over our own lives. Don't you find that your willfulness gets you into a lot of trouble? I know mine does. I get very stubborn about my point of view, having things go my way, being in control, determining my own future, planning my way through life, developing strategies for my success, making judgments, and believing that I am right. Yet the outcome of turning to the ego for guidance is that we can never be certain about anything, and this results in fear, anxiety and insecurity. If things don't work the way they should, and we don't get what we want, we attack.

It is always something, or someone, or some circumstance or event, which we use to justify our attacks. We hold grievances, we manipulate, we demand, we seduce, and we try to get something from the person or situation, which are all forms of attack. With attack comes more fear, because now we expect retaliation. We expect that someone will betray us, or try to manipulate us or demand something from us. The world becomes a threatening, fearful place. Jesus says, " It is not my will to grope about in darkness, fearful of shadows and afraid of things unseen and unreal." (W.87.1.3) The will that appears to be functioning in the world is  part of this illusion. It is all unreal, and it brings us nothing but more guilt and fear.
 

In making the decision to "use the power of my will today," (W.87.1.2) I am choosing to exercise the power of my mind to make another choice by turning away from the will that I have substituted for God's will. Instead of choosing to listen to the ego, we remind ourselves that we can choose to see this situation differently when we turn to the Holy Spirit to show us His interpretation. Yes, someone may have said something unkind today, but it is my choice as to how I perceive it. We all feel vulnerable and afraid, and we project these fears onto the world, and we become fearful of what the world will do to us. We " grope about in darkness, fearful of shadows and afraid of things unseen and unreal." (W.87.1.3) The world of separation is a result of the projection of the guilt and fear in our minds. When the mind is freed of sin and guilt through forgiveness, the world becomes a reflection of innocence. We are all here to wake up from this dream, and when we choose the Holy Spirit as our Teacher, He helps us to see every situation without judgment.
   

Our day to day life is like groping about in darkness, afraid of things not even there, unseen and unreal. It is a fearful state where there is no peace in our everyday condition-a condition of fear, doubt and uncertainty. Only in the light, where there is true perception, can we experience peace. How can we know where we are going when all is dark and full of uncertainty. But we can make another choice. We can choose to be willing to release our judgments and our grievances. When we are angry and frustrated with any person or situation, it is because we want to make them responsible for the guilt that is in our minds. This is why we want others to betray and hurt us. We set it up that way so that we could see them as the cause of our own distress. In other words, we see the world as the cause and ourselves as an effect. Jesus is showing us that only mind is cause and that the world is effect. We have it all wrong.

" Who would attempt to fly with the tiny wings of a sparrow when the mighty power of an eagle has been given him? And who would place his faith in the shabby offerings of the ego when the gifts of God are laid before him?" (M.4.I.2.2-3) To me this is the same as flying on one's own, believing in our little will and resting on our own authority. This is where trust comes in. Jesus says that once we have experienced the power available to us by joining with God's will, recognizing it as our own, that it will be " impossible to trust one's own petty strength again." (M.4.I.2.1)
   

The ego wants to latch onto guilt like a dog with a bone. It is a huge temptation. The ego feeds on this kind of temptation. We make comparisons with others, seeing their guilt and buying our own innocence at their expense. We hold grievances against others, refusing to let them go in the belief that "no one is going to walk over me." We think of this as power and strength, yet whenever we attack a brother it just guarantees more guilt and fear that they will retaliate. It becomes a vicious circle. The conflict is within us, and when we project it outward we experience conflict with our brothers. When we are in conflict, we believe we each have a different will and are in competition with each other. Yet we only share one will. My true will and my brother's are the same. Our eternal safety is guaranteed, because there is only one will that I share with all my brothers. Through forgiveness, we recognize our sameness, which is a reflection of our oneness. When we see the Christ in our brother, we know our own Self, which is one with God.

In summary, the progression of the ego error starts with the belief that there is another will but God's. Because of this we become afraid of our brothers and their competing wills, and now experience fear so we attack, and, because we attack, we fear for our eternal safety. The answer is to recognize, " I am safe today because there is no will but God's." (W.87.3.2) We experience that we are safe when we remember who we are. In our identification with the body, we can never feel safe, but our safety lies in our recognition that " all this has not occurred. I am safe because there is no will but God's." (W.87.3.5-6) What has not occurred is that anyone can hurt me. I forgive you for what you have not done.
 

Practicing this idea involves acknowledging that whatever seems to be happening to me today is part of " God's will for me, however I may see it." (W.87.4.4) This can sound like God is willing for me to suffer a difficult situation, but this is not so. Instead, whatever the situation, God's love and peace are behind any seeming difficulty, and we can choose that love in any situation in which we seem to find ourselves by releasing the ego's hold on us so that we can experience the miracle.

Just like in the movie, "Wide Awake", we can only know the truth when we are ready for it. That is why this path is not to be imposed on others. To try to impose this teaching is to attack. It is to be a missionary worker, trying to change the mind of our brother, instead of focusing on our own minds. To do that is an act of violence. It is all about readiness to another way of seeing. The signs of the Spirit are as near and clear as we are ready and willing to see and hear. In the movie, Joshua's prayer was answered because it was a prayer from the heart.

Our will, which is one with God's, has tremendous power. When we join with His will, we can make great strides forward today. It is in our nature to express and extend love, and how that is expressed in this world is through forgiveness. That is what time is for. There is nothing to be done except the undoing of what we have made, which is the false self, and a world where we have come to hide from God. Forgiveness removes what we have made so what God created can shine through.

TEXT

¹ You are hampered in your progress by your demands to know what you do not know. This is actually a way of holding on to deprivation. You cannot reasonably object to following instructions in a course for knowing on the grounds that you do not know. The need for the course is implicit in your objection. Knowledge is not the motivation for learning this course. Peace is. As the prerequisite for knowledge, peace must be learned. This is only because those who are in conflict are not peaceful, and peace is the condition of knowledge because it is the condition of the Kingdom.

 

² Knowledge will be restored when you meet its conditions. This is not a bargain made by God, Who makes no bargains. It is merely the result of your misuse of His laws on behalf of a will that is not His. Knowledge is His Will. If you are opposing His Will, how can you have knowledge? I have told you what knowledge offers you, but it is clear that you do not regard this as wholly desirable. If you did, you would hardly be willing to throw it away so readily when the ego asks for your allegiance. The distraction of the ego seems to interfere with your learning, but the ego has no power to distract you unless you give it the power.

 

³ The ego's voice is an hallucination. You cannot expect it to say, "I am not real." Hallucinations are inaccurate perceptions of reality. Yet you are not asked to dispel them alone. You are merely asked to evaluate them in terms of their results to you. If you do not want them on the basis of loss of peace, they will be removed from your mind for you. Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war does deprive you of peace. Yet in this war there is no opponent. This is the reinterpretation of reality which you must make to secure peace, and the only one you need ever make.

 

II. The Direction of the Curriculum  

⁴ Those whom you perceive as opponents are part of your peace, which you are giving up by attacking them. How can you have what you give up? You share to have, but you do not give it up yourself. When you give up peace, you are excluding yourself from it. This is a condition which is so alien to the Kingdom that you cannot understand the state which prevails within it. Your past learning must have taught you the wrong things simply because it has not made you happy. On this basis alone, its value should be questioned.

 

⁵ If learning aims at change, and that is always its purpose, are you satisfied with the changes your learning has brought you? Dissatisfaction with learning outcomes must be a sign of learning failure, since it means that you did not get what you want. The curriculum of the Atonement is the opposite of the curriculum you have established for yourselves, but so is its outcome. If the outcome of yours has made you unhappy and if you want a different one, a change in the curriculum is obviously necessary.

 

⁶ The first change that must be introduced is a change in direction. A meaningful curriculum cannot be inconsistent. If it is planned by two teachers, each believing in diametrically opposed ideas, it cannot be integrated. If it is carried out by these two teachers simultaneously, each one merely interferes with the other. This leads to fluctuation, but not to change. The volatile have no direction. They cannot choose one because they cannot relinquish the other, even if the other does not exist. Their conflicted curriculum teaches them all directions exist and gives them no rationale for choice.

 

⁷ The total senselessness of such a curriculum must be fully recognized before a real change in direction becomes possible. You cannot learn simultaneously from two teachers who are in total disagreement about everything. Their joint curriculum presents an impossible learning task. They are teaching you entirely different things in entirely different ways, which might be possible except for the crucial fact that both are teaching you about yourself. Your reality is unaffected by both, but if you listen to both your mind will be split about what your reality is.

 

III. The Rationale for Choice   

⁸ There is a rationale for choice. Only one Teacher knows what your reality is. If learning that is the purpose of the curriculum, you must learn it of Him. The ego does not know what it is trying to teach. It is trying to teach you what you are without knowing it. The ego is expert only in confusion. It does not understand anything else. As a teacher, then, it is totally confused and totally confusing. Even if you could disregard the Holy Spirit entirely, which is quite impossible, you could learn nothing from the ego because the ego knows nothing.

 

⁹ Is there any possible reason for choosing a teacher such as this? Does the total disregard of anything it teaches make anything but sense? Is this the teacher to whom a Son of God should turn to find himself? The ego has never given you a sensible answer to anything. Simply on the grounds of your own experience with the ego's teaching, should not this alone disqualify it as your future teacher? Yet the ego has done more harm to your learning than this alone. Learning is joyful if it leads you along your natural path and facilitates the development of what you have. When you are taught against your nature, however, you will lose by your learning because your learning will imprison you. Your will is in your nature and therefore cannot go against it.

 

¹⁰ The ego cannot teach you anything as long as your will is free because you will not listen to it. It is not your will to be imprisoned because your will is free. That is why the ego is the denial of free will. It is never God who coerces you because He shares His Will with you. His Voice teaches only His Will, but that is not the Holy Spirit's lesson because that is what you are. The lesson is that your will and God's cannot be out of accord because they are one. This is the undoing of everything the ego tries to teach. It is not, then, only the direction of the curriculum which must be unconflicted, but also the content.

 

¹¹ The ego wants to teach you that you want to oppose God's Will. This unnatural lesson cannot be learned, but the attempt to learn it is a violation of your own freedom and makes you afraid of your will because it is free. The Holy Spirit opposes any imprisoning of the will of a Son of God, knowing that the will of the Son is the Father's. The Holy Spirit leads you steadily along the path of freedom, teaching you how to disregard or look beyond everything that would hold you back.

 

¹² We said before that the Holy Spirit teaches you the difference between pain and joy. That is the same as saying that He teaches you the difference between imprisonment and freedom. You cannot make this distinction without Him. That is because you have taught yourself that imprisonment is freedom. Believing them to be the same, how can you tell them apart? Can you ask the part of your mind that taught you to believe they are the same to teach you the difference between them? 

 

¹³ The Holy Spirit's teaching takes only one direction and has only one goal. His direction is freedom, and His goal is God. Yet He cannot conceive of God without you because it is not God's Will to be without you. When you have learned that your will is God's, you could no more will to be without Him than He could will to be without you. This is freedom and this is joy. Deny yourself this and you are denying God His Kingdom because He created you for this. When we said, "All power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His," this is what we meant. 

 

¹⁴ The Will of God is without limit, and all power and glory lie within it. It is boundless in strength and in love and in peace. It has no boundaries because its extension is unlimited, and it encompasses all things because it created all things. By creating all things, it made them part of itself. You are the Will of God because this is how you were created. Because your Creator creates only like Himself, you are like Him. You are part of Him Who is all power and glory and are therefore as unlimited as He is.

 

¹⁵ To what else except all power and glory can the Holy Spirit appeal to restore God's Kingdom? His appeal, then, is merely to what the Kingdom is and for its own acknowledgment of what it is. When you acknowledge this you bring the acknowledgment automatically to everyone because you have acknowledged everyone. By your recognition you awaken theirs, and through theirs yours is extended. Awakening runs easily and gladly through the Kingdom in answer to the Call of God. This is the natural response of every Son of God to the Voice of his Creator because it is the Voice for his creations and for his own extension.

 

 

TEXT CONFERENCE CALL RECORDINGS on SOUNDCLOUD

Hope you will click Heart to LIKE Us
Click this Heart and then click heart on SoundCloud page
to LIKE Us