This Lesson contrasts our ego wishes, which have no power, with the will that we share with God, which has " all the power of creation in it." (W.73.1.3) Jesus tells us that our will is the same as God's Will because He is our Creator. It is the only true will. Everything else is just idle wishes, which make nothing. " Yet God wills. He does not wish. Your will is as powerful as His because it is His." (T.7.X.4.6-8)(ACIM OE T.7.XI.102) Again in Chapter 11, Jesus says, " You must ask what God's Will is in everything because it is yours." (T.11.I.8.5)(ACIM OE T.10.II.12) Yet our ego wishes seem to oppose God's will. We have all kinds of ego thoughts and ideas about what we want and need, and while they are called idle wishes, which have no power at all, (1.4) they have nevertheless made this whole world of illusion!! In the illusion, our idle wishes do have power. They lack the power of creation, but they do have the power to miscreate. " They make nothing that is real." (W.73.1.7) While idle wishes have made the whole world, it is not real, no matter how solid it seems to us, because of the beliefs we hold about it. It is still nothing, but because we have invested the ego with the power of our minds, our minds have power in the illusion. As we withdraw belief from this world and instead invest it in remembering our Oneness with Him, we will awaken from this dream.
       

" Idle wishes and grievances are partners or co-makers in picturing the world you see. The wishes of the ego gave rise to it, and the ego's need for grievances, which are necessary to maintain it, people it with figures that seem to attack you and call for 'righteous' judgment." (W.73.2.1-2) It is a world of special relationships where we traffic in grievances. Our grievances maintain the separation. We see our brothers and ourselves, not as we are, as the One Son, united in creation, but instead as characters in the dream, trading grievances back and forth with each other. Of course we each see ourselves as the main character in the dream with others playing supporting roles. Grievances tend to escalate as we battle each other, giving as little as possible to get as much as possible for ourselves. We are always protecting ourselves with our defenses against further attack. Guilt needs a target. That is why we have specific people on which to project our guilt. Some of those people in our dream we seem to love and others we think we hate or want to ignore, but either way we do a dance of passing guilt, attack and defense back and forth with each other. That is why Jesus says we all traffic in guilt and are very good at it, but the cost to us is that when we do this we " do not know your brothers or your Self." (W.73.2.5) That is a high cost that we seem willing to pay in order to keep our grievances!
   

The ego needs grievances " which are necessary to maintain it." (W.73.2.2) Grievances are the oxygen of the ego, in that it needs grievances in order to thrive. It is our addiction to conflict and drama. It is how we keep others separate from us and make them the sinners deserving punishment so we can see ourselves as free of guilt. They are expected to serve our specialness, and when they don't meet our needs, we judge them and consider it " righteous" to do so. (W.73.2.2) Everyone in our dream, including ourselves, seem to move about attacking each other and retaliating at the bequest of the ego, always trying to get something from the other. If it were not for these characters in the dream, or middlemen, as they are called here, we would meet as holy Sons of God in the light that unites us all as one Self. But as long as we hold grievances against our brothers, we will not know them. We will not see their reality as the Christ. Instead of seeing their innocence, we use them to make bargains, so that we can get what we want from them and hold them to expectations and demand reciprocity in turn. And with each exchange, our separation from each other is reinforced. That is why special relationships all deteriorate over time as the mountain of grievances grows. When we commit to healing and wholeness, our relationships become holy. With healing, our relationships become better and better over time.
   

Today we are asked to try to reach a place that is not Heaven, but the light of Heaven shines on it. This is the real world. It is the " world that is in accordance with your will. The light is in it because it does not oppose the Will of God." (W.73.4.1-2) It is a world that reflects the reality of Heaven. The world is just an outward picture of our inward condition. When we find the light within, we will see a world of light without.

How do we get there? There is only one answer. We get there through forgiveness. It is about accepting Atonement (the correction/healing) for ourselves by choosing to dismiss the ego, refusing to listen to it and instead aligning with our true will, which is God's Will. " Forgiveness lifts the darkness, reasserts your will, and lets you look upon a world of light." (W.73.5.4) The light is not in the world, but is in our minds. What keeps the ego going is simply our willingness to listen to it. When we turn to the ego, we really don't see each other. We don't see our brothers' reality. What we see is an image of what we have made of them, which is a projection of the guilt in our minds. Yet " The barrier of grievances is easily passed, and cannot stand between you and your salvation." (W.73.5.5) It is just a thought away! Do I really want the hell that I put myself in when I hold grievances? How insane is it to keep the anger and suffer when we can choose to change our minds and bring our insane wishes to the Holy Spirit?

How this dynamic has been set up by the ego has been hidden from us, which is why Jesus is bringing it to our awareness so that we can choose against it when we see it for what it is. If our minds are the projectors, when we load the projector with the ego tape, we see a darkened world of guilt, fear, anger, attack. But if we change the tape and choose the one the Holy Spirit offers, which is just pure light, the world we see will be entirely different. We change what is in the projector by releasing grievances through forgiveness. We turn to the Holy Spirit and ask for His interpretation in place of our own. We take the hand of Jesus as he invites us to do, and with willingness we bring to awareness our judgments and release them. It means that we give up our justifications for seeing our brother as guilty. We release the hold that the ego seems to have on us. We recognize that, however powerful ego wishes seem to be, and however powerful our desire for revenge and attack may be, we can make a shift through forgiveness. It is a choice that is available to us, now that we have stepped on the path and become aware that we have a choice. We don't have to listen to the ego. We will be very motivated to make this choice when we see how much peace and happiness is available through forgiveness, and how much suffering we experience until we make this choice.

" Your picture of the world can only mirror what is within." (W.73.5.1) As we shift from grievances, which show us a " darkened world," (W.73.5.3) to forgiveness, the darkness is lifted. (W.73.5.4) We can see this in our everyday experience. Whether we talk about a movie, a book, a person, a situation, we all have a different "take" on it and we argue about the correctness of our perception. Yet all anyone is seeing is what is in their own minds. We are seeing our own inner world projected onto the screen. Now it seems to be on the outside. As we change our inner world, the outer world of perception shifts, and what is reflected is what the Course calls the real world, seen from the perspective of a healed mind. Forgiveness replaces the world we don't want with the one we do want, which is one where our will is joined with God's.

Jesus puts a very blunt question to us when he says, " Do you really want to be in hell? Do you really want to weep and suffer and die?" (W.73.5.7-8) Who would ever choose that? Yet we have chosen it. Now with every temptation to choose hell, we can change our minds. When we listen to the ego, we continue to hold out hope that there is still something in the world that will bring us happiness and give us what we think we want. We continue to think that we can exert our idle wishes and find the answers for our lives. We continue to think that attack and grievances will get us something of value. Yet Jesus urges us to " Forget the ego's arguments which seek to prove all this is really Heaven." (W.73.6.1) As long as we seek for things in the world for our happiness, and follow the ego's plan for salvation, we will only suffer. We all want to be happy, but we are following the wrong teacher. Oh yes, we will experience moments of happiness, but they are never lasting. In fact they are always tinged with fear that they won't last. As has been said many times, the ego teaches us to " seek but do not find." (T.16.V.6.5)(ACIM OE T.16.VI.48)  As long as we turn to its guidance, we remain hopeful that there is something here to seek that will make us happy.

The question is, do we want to oppose God's Will for us, which is for our happiness? " It is not the purpose of an alien power, thrust upon you unwillingly." (W.73.9.2) It requires that we see how wrong we have been in thinking we would want something that is different from what God Wills for us by following our own guidance. When we see how unhappy this has made us, our willingness to join with the Holy Spirit in our minds is reinforced. And we tell ourselves " with gentle firmness and quiet certainty: I will there be light. Let me behold the light that reflects God's Will and mine." (W.73.10.1-3) In other words, I am determined to release my grievances so that I can behold the light in my brother and embrace him in the love that we share as one Son. I do so by letting these grievances go, " instead of cherishing them and hiding them in darkness." (W.73.11.7) It means we must take responsibility for our own guilt and look at it with honesty and courage, rather than defending and pretending that we are innocent victims of attack. It is only our own guilt that we are seeing "out there."

This Lesson is helping us to see that when we choose the ego, we are choosing against our own happiness. Our healing depends on being willing to see the Christ in everyone. By getting in touch with the light we can bring it to everyone who we meet or think about today. When you are tempted to hold a grievance of any kind today, whether in the form of worry, anger, frustration, impatience, anything that crosses your mind that takes away your peace, just apply today's idea. Bring your ego thoughts, which kill your joy and peace, to the memory of God's Love within.

 

TEXT

¹ The creative power of both God and His creations is limitless, but they are not in reciprocal relationship. You do communicate fully with God, as He does with you. This is an ongoing process in which you share, and because you share it, you are inspired to create like God. Yet in creation you are not in reciprocal relation to God since He created you, but you did not create Him. We have already said that only in this respect your creative power differs from His. Even in this world there is a parallel. Parents give birth to children, but children do not give birth to parents. They do, however, give birth to their children and thus give birth as their parents do.

 

² If you created God and He created you, the Kingdom could not increase through its own creative thought. Creation would therefore be limited, and you would not be co-creators with God. As God's creative Thought proceeds from Him to you, so must your creative thought proceed from you to your creations. Only in this way can all creative power extend outward. God's accomplishments are not yours. But yours are like His. He created the Sonship, and you increase it. You have the power to add to the Kingdom, but not to add to the Creator of the Kingdom. You claim this power when you become vigilant only for God and His Kingdom. By accepting this power as yours, you have learned to be what you are.

 

³ Your creations belong in you, as you belong in God. You are part of God, as your sons are part of His Sons. To create is to love. Love extends outward simply because it cannot be contained. Being limitless, it does not stop. It creates forever, but not in time. God's creations have always been because He has always been. Your creations have always been because you can create only as God creates. Eternity is yours because He created you eternal.

 

II. Bargaining versus Healing 

⁴ The ego demands reciprocal rights because it is competitive rather than loving. It is always willing to make a "deal," but it cannot understand that to be like another means that no deals are possible. To gain you must give, not bargain. To bargain is to limit giving, and this is not God's Will. To will with God is to create like Him. God does not limit His gifts in any way. You are His gifts, and so your gifts must be like His. Your gifts to the Kingdom must be like His gifts to you.

 

⁵ I gave only love to the Kingdom because I believed that was what I was. What you believe you are determines your gifts, and if God created you by extending Himself as you, you can only extend yourself as He did. Only joy increases forever, since joy and eternity are inseparable. God extends outward beyond limits and beyond time, and you who are co-creators with Him extend His Kingdom forever and beyond limit. Eternity is the indelible stamp of creation. The eternal are in peace and joy forever.

 

⁶ To think like God is to share His certainty of what you are and to create like Him is to share the perfect love He shares with you. To this the Holy Spirit leads you that your joy may be complete because the Kingdom of God is whole. We have said that the last step in the reawakening of knowledge is taken by God. This is true, but it is hard to explain in words because words are symbols, and nothing that is true needs to be explained. However, the Holy Spirit has the task of translating the useless into the useful, the meaningless into the meaningful, and the temporary into the timeless. He can therefore tell you something about this last step, although this one you must know yourself, since by it you know what you are. This is your being.

 

⁷ God does not take steps because His accomplishments are not gradual. He does not teach because His creations are changeless. He does nothing last because He created first and for always. It must be understood that the word "first" as applied to Him is not a time concept. He is first in the sense that He is the first in the Holy Trinity itself. He is the Prime Creator because He created His co-creators. Because He did, time applies neither to Him nor to what He created. The "last step" that God will take was therefore true in the beginning, is true now, and will be true forever.

 

⁸ What is timeless is always there because its being is eternally changeless. It does not change by increase because it was forever created to increase. If you perceive it as not increasing, you do not know what it is. You also do not know what created it or Who He is. God does not reveal this to you because it was never hidden. His light was never obscured because it is His Will to share it. How can what is fully shared be withheld and then revealed?

 

⁹ To heal is the only kind of thinking in this world that resembles the Thought of God, and because of the elements which they share, can transfer to it. When a brother perceives himself as sick, he is perceiving himself as not whole and therefore in need. If you too see him this way, you are seeing him as if he were absent from the Kingdom or separated from it, thus making the Kingdom itself obscure to both of you. Sickness and separation are not of God, but the Kingdom is. If you obscure the Kingdom, you are perceiving what is not of God.

 

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