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A COURSE IN MIRACLES CH 9 "THE CORRECTION OF ERROR" IX. THE DECISION TO FORGET
70 To remember is merely to restore to your mind
what is already there. You do not
make what you remember; you merely accept again what has been made but was rejected. The ability to accept truth in this world is the perceptual counterpart of creating in the Kingdom. God will do His part if you will do yours, and
His return in exchange for yours is the exchange of knowledge
for perception.
Nothing is beyond His Will for you. But signify your will to remember Him and behold! He will give you everything but for the asking.
ACIM.OE.TX.CH 9.IX.70
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DAILY LESSON
L e s s o n 110
I am as God created me.
Voice and Music by CIMS SonShip Radio
We will repeat today's idea from time
to time. For this one thought would be enough to save you and the world, if you believed that it is true. Its truth would mean that you have made no changes in yourself which have reality, nor changed the universe so that what God created was replaced by fear and evil, misery and death. If you remain as God created you, fear has no meaning, evil is not real, and misery and death do not exist. | Today's idea is therefore all you need to let complete correction heal your mind and give you perfect vision, which will heal all the mistakes that any mind has made at any time or place. It is enough to heal the past and make the future free. It is enough to let the present be accepted as it is. It is enough to let time be the means for all the world to learn escape from time, and every change which time appears to bring in passing by. If you remain as God created you appearances cannot replace the truth, health cannot turn to sickness, nor can death be substitute for life, or fear for love. All this has not occurred, if you remain as God created you. You need no thought but just this one, to let redemption come to light the world and free it from the past. In this one thought is all the past undone; the present saved to quietly extend into a timeless future. If you are as God created you, then there has been no separation of your mind from His, no split between your mind and other minds, and only unity within your own. The healing power of today's idea is limitless. It is the birthplace of all miracles, the great restorer of the truth to the awareness of the world. Practice today's idea with gratitude. This is the truth that comes to set you free. This is the truth that God has promised you. This is the Word in which all sorrow ends. For your five minute practice periods, begin with this quotation from the text:
"
I am as God created me. His Son can suffer nothing. And I am His Son."
Then, with this statement firmly in your mind,
try to discover in your mind this Self Who is the holy Son of God Himself. Seek Him within you Who is Christ in you, the Son of God and Brother to the world; the Saviour Who has been forever saved, with power to save whoever touches Him however lightly, asking for the Word which tells him he is brother unto Him. You are as God created you. Today honor your Self. Let graven images you made to be the Son of God instead of what he is be worshiped not today. Deep in your mind the holy Christ in you is waiting your acknowledgment as you. And you are lost and do not know yourself while He is unacknowledged and unknown. Seek Him today, and find Him. He will be your Saviour from all idols you have made. For when you find Him you will understand how worthless are your idols, and how false the images which you believe were you. Today we make a great advance to truth by letting idols go, and opening our hands and hearts and minds to God today. We will remember Him throughout the day with thankful hearts, and loving thoughts for all who meet with us today, for it is thus that we remember Him. And we will say, that we may be reminded of His Son, our holy Self, the Christ in each of us:
"
I am as God created me."
Let us declare this truth as often as we can. This is the Word of God that sets you free. This is the key that opens up the gate of Heaven, and which lets you enter in the peace of God and His eternity.
~ Original Hand Script of ACIM
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ACIM Edmonton - Sarah's Reflections
LESSON 110
I am as God created me.
Sarah's Commentary:
Here we are approaching another review and 110 days into the year! Amazing! As we think about the days and years and the changes we are going through in our lives, we think this is our reality. We believe in change. We believe in time. We believe in death. We believe our problems are real and the problems of the world are equally real and must somehow be solved. Yet this Lesson says there is nothing we can do or have done to change our eternal reality. We have not changed what God has created. We are pure. We are innocent. We are love. We are beautiful, divine beings. We are whole and complete and lacking nothing. We are the Son of God, and thus we have all of the attributes of God. There is no separation between ourselves and God.
How is it that we will often sink into fear, misery, judgment and attack? We believe time will ultimately ravage our bodies and turn them into dust. And indeed it will, but we are not these bodies. Our consciousness continues. Jesus asks, "Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality and dying in the end?" (M.27.1.2) Yet this is exactly how we think of our lives. This Lesson assures us, again, there is no death. The purpose of our lives is to use every situation, every event, and every relationship to help us wake up from this dream. In the dream, we believe we have separated from Love. "I am as God created me" means I am eternal. God did not create what dies and decays. If He did, it would be impossible to think of Him as loving.
"The 'reality' of death is firmly rooted in the belief that God's Son is a body. And if God created bodies, death would indeed be real
." (M.27.5.1-2) Instead, we must realize we are guiltless now and forever. "For this one thought would be enough to save you and the world if you believed that it is true." (W.110.1.2) What this means is we have not changed ourselves, and indeed our bodies are not who we are. They are only illusory projections of the guilt in our minds. (W.110.1.3) The mind is not in the body. The body is a projection of the mind. If this is so, healing the guilt in our minds would have the effect of changing the reality of our bodily experience, since the body is just a puppet of the mind and has no volition of its own.
We feel we have corrupted ourselves by our sins. We believe we have changed our reality. Our individual existence seems to be a witness to a reality based on our identity as a body and personality. In seemingly living in this world, we have accumulated even more guilt. Now we believe we are "the home of evil, darkness and sin." (W.93.1.1) Yes, we have made many mistakes, and as a result we feel terrible and even sinful. The mistakes we have made and the sins we believe we have committed assume the reality of time. As a result, we now think we need time to heal our guilt. In other words, we believe we must atone for our many sins.
Jesus says, "No!" We are exactly as God created us. This is enough to heal the past, let the present be, and free the future. Just accepting this fact will release us from it all. There is nothing to atone for, no debt to pay. We only accept the thought that we cannot, and have not, changed what God created as pure and holy. Our purity and holiness is in our minds. It was placed there at the moment of separation. At that moment, the separation was undone. The memory of God is in our right minds and each forgiveness Lesson teaches us how to access that memory, but first, we have to get in touch with the unconscious guilt in the mind. This is what needs to be released.
The Christ Self has never left the mind. It is with us still. This Lesson is about getting in touch with the truth about ourselves. It is about giving up our belief that we must use time to atone for our sins, while we keep racking them up with all of our attacks. Give up the idea you have to make yourself better and that there is something in you to be fixed.
The image I think I am, my self-concept, the me I think of as Sarah, is the self I think I made. I believe this self was, and is, shaped by people in my life. I believe this image has replaced my Divine Self. In fact, it is an idol and not at all the perfection created by God. The idol seems to have taken the place of God. I now hold the belief I have corrupted the Divine Self that I am, screwed it up, and destroyed its innocence. This is what maintains the guilt. We think of ourselves as sometimes kind, sometimes attacking, sometimes loving, sometimes judging, sometimes smart, sometimes clever, sometimes stupid, and sometimes capable, in addition to many, many beliefs and attributes, some of which we like and some of which we dislike. These are attributes of the self-image. . .the idol.
This is the graven image we hold dear and even worship. "Let graven images you made to be the Son of God instead of what he is be worshipped not today." (W.110.9.2) Who I really am is in my mind and has never left my mind. It is what is unchanged and unchangeable. Releasing the false attributes of my self-concept and accepting the truth is what this Lesson is about. The problem is we can't release what we don't see, don't acknowledge and have denied in ourselves. Fortunately, the world and all our relationships reflect what we believe, which gives us an opportunity to see that what is unhealed in us is projected out.
"The healing power of today's idea is limitless. It is the birthplace of all miracles, the restorer of the truth to the awareness of the world
." (W.110.5.1-2) Today, we affirm that we really can't suffer because we are God's Son. Affirmations in and of themselves will not heal the guilt. By bringing guilt to light, we can experience the miracle. The miracle offers us the evidence that there is another way. Our way of trying to fix things in the world just doesn't work. With every attack comes fear and counterattack. Look at the world. Every day we witness the fact that peace does not come as a result of war, whether in our relationships or on the world stage. Whenever we take sides in attacking those we see as wrong, we contribute to the problem. Peace is not something that happens to you, but THROUGH you. To point fingers and believe anyone or anything is the problem is to miss a very important opportunity.
Each one of us needs to be the SOURCE of the solution, not the effect. By embracing today's idea with gratitude, we enhance our motivation to take responsibility for our projections. All sorrows end with the realization of the truth of who we are. Practicing the idea is always about giving over our own false perceptions by being willing to look at them and bring them to the truth, so the miracle can shine forth. It means giving over our thoughts of worry, our anger, fear, and concerns, and bringing our focus to the place within, where we can feel the unchangeable nature of our Being. The ego is always calling our attention to painful memories and hurts, but these thoughts can never define us. They are not who we are.
The birthplace of vision is the recognition that we are as God created us, and with vision, we see the Christ in each brother. No matter how things look today, no matter what problems seem to be coming at us, the Answer is within us at every moment. The Answer is in the right mind within, where truth resides. The ego is the image maker that has fooled us into thinking we are a body. The task now is to go into the place in us where the quiet center resides, where the Holy Child awaits us. By stilling those thoughts that bubble and boil on the surface of our minds, by seeing these thoughts do not define us and are not who we are, we sink into this place where miracles are given birth. Yes, it does take some discipline and effort.
The ego puts up a lot of resistance and is suspicious about what we are up to as we focus on our healing. Regardless of its attempts at distraction and resistance to the truth, what the ego can't do is replace the truth already in our minds. It can only keep us unaware when we identify with it, and this is our choice. We can choose not to listen to the voice of the ego, and we can choose instead to bring our attention to the Voice of Truth in our minds. The Holy Spirit will give us another interpretation to the one given by the ego for any situation we encounter. This Voice will never shout down the ego. Its quiet truth will never argue with the ego. We have free will and will choose, when we are ready, to turn to the Spirit for help.
Whatever we fear has not occurred. It is all part of the dream of this world. There are things here that need our attention, but we can choose to address them from a place of peace. The ego is raucous and demanding and insistent. It does not love us. In any situation where we are confronted, the ego says, "Turn to me. I will help you solve the problem." Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit quietly listens, watches, and is still, awaiting our call. In every situation, we make a choice for which voice we will listen to.
We recently returned from Bavaria where our flight information was all screwed up. It was such a temptation to become angry and distressed, yet in situations such as this, the opportunity is there to choose peace. We need to remember we are still love, and this turmoil is not the truth. We are as God created us. We are His Son and can suffer nothing. And "deep in our mind the holy Christ in you is waiting your acknowledgment as you." (W.110.9.4) Until we do, we will stay lost and the Self we are, as created by God, will not be known to us.
We remind ourselves frequently today, "I am as God created me. His Son can suffer nothing. And I am His Son." (W.110.6.2-4) When the belief in our bodily identity is released, by releasing the unconscious guilt in our minds and with it all the concepts and beliefs we hold, truth will dawn on our minds. This is what accepting Atonement for ourselves is all about. It is a choice in our minds we can make when this is what we truly want. When we choose to see our brother guiltless and keep asking for help from Jesus, rather than the ego, we step through the doorway from our belief in guilt to the truth of who we are.
Love and blessings, Sarah
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IX. The Decision to Forget
68 Unless you
know something, you
cannot dissociate it. Knowledge therefore
precedes dissociation, and dissociation is nothing more than a
decision to forget. What has been forgotten then appears to be fearful, but
only because the dissociation was an
attack on truth. You are fearful
because you have forgotten. And you have
replaced your knowledge by an awareness of dreams because you are
afraid of your dissociation,
not of what you have dissociated. Even in this world's therapy, when dissociated material is
accepted,it ceases to be fearful, for the laws of mind always hold.
69 Yet to give up the dissociation of
reality brings more than merely lack of fear. In
this decision lie joy and peace and the glory of creation. Offer the Holy Spirit only your will to remember, for He retains the knowledge of God and of yourself
for you, waiting for your acceptance. Give up gladly
everything that would stand in the way of your remembering, for God is in your memory, and His Voice will tell you that you are part of Him when you are willing to remember Him and know your own reality again. Let nothing in this world delay your remembering of Him, for in this remembering is the knowledge of
yourself.
70 To remember is merely to restore to your mind
what is already there. You do not
make what you remember; you merely accept again what has been made but was rejected. The ability to accept truth in this world is the perceptual counterpart of creating in the Kingdom. God will do His part if you will do yours, and
His return in exchange for yours is the exchange of knowledge
for perception.
Nothing is beyond His Will for you. But signify your will to remember Him and behold! He will give you everything but for the asking.
71 When you attack, you are denying
yourself. You are specifically teaching yourself that you are
not what you are. Your denial of reality precludes the
acceptance of God's gift because you have accepted something
else in its place. If you understand that the misuse of defenses always constitutes an attack on truth and truth is God, you will realize why this is
always fearful. If you further recognize that you are
part of God, you will understand why it is that you always attack yourself
first.
72 [
All attack is self-attack. It cannot
be anything else. Arising from your
own decision
not to be what you
are, it is an attack on your identification. Attack is thus the way in which your identification is lost because, when you attack, you
must have forgotten what you are. And if your reality is God's, when
you attack you are not remembering
Him. This is not because He is gone, but because you are willing
actively not to remember Him.]
3
73 If you realized the complete havoc this makes of your peace of mind, you could not make such an insane decision. You make it only because you still believe that it can
get you something you
want. It follows, then, that you want something
other than peace of mind, but you have not considered what it must be. Yet the logical outcome of your decision is perfectly clear if you will
look at it. By deciding
against your reality, you have made yourself vigilant
against God and His Kingdom. And it is
this vigilance that makes you afraid to remember Him.
74 You have
not attacked God, and you
do love Him. Can you change your reality? No one can will to destroy himself. When you think you are attacking your self, it is a sure sign that you hate what you
think you are. And this, and
only this, can
be attacked by you. What you
think you are can be hateful, and what this strange image makes you do can be very destructive. Yet the destruction is no more real than the image, although those who make idols
do worship them. The idols are nothing, but their worshipers are the Sons of God in sickness.
75 God would have them released from their sickness and returned to His Mind. He will not
limit your power to help them because He has
given it to you. Do not be afraid of it because it is your salvation. What Comforter can there be for the sick Children of God except His power through
you? Remember that it does not matter
where in the Sonship He is accepted. He is
always accepted for all, and when
your mind receives Him, the remembrance of Him awakens throughout the Sonship. Heal your brothers simply by accepting God
for them.
76 Your minds are not separate, and God has only one channel for healing because He has but one Son. His remaining communication link with all His Children joins them together and them to Him. To be aware of this is to heal them because it is the awareness that no one is separate, and so no one is sick. To believe that a Son of God
can be sick is to believe that part of God can suffer. Love
cannot suffer because it cannot attack. The remembrance of love therefore brings invulnerability with it.
77 Do not side with sickness in the presence of a Son of God even if
he believes in it, for
your acceptance of God in him
acknowledges the love of God which he has forgotten. Your recognition of him as
part of God teaches him the truth about himself, which he is denying. Would you
strengthen his denial of God and thus lose sight of
yourself? Or would you remind him of his wholeness and remember your Creator
with him? To believe a Son of God is sick is to worship the same idol he does. God created love,
not idolatry. All forms of idolatry are caricatures of creation, taught by sick minds which are too divided to know that creation
shares power and
never usurps it. Sickness is idolatry because it is the belief that power can be taken
from you. Yet this is impossible because you are part of God, Who
is all power.
78 A sick god
must be an idol, made in the image of what its maker thinks
he is. And that is exactly what the ego
does perceive in a Son of God; a sick god, self-created, self-sufficient, very vicious, and very vulnerable. Is
this the idol you would worship? Is
this the image you would be vigilant to
save? [Are you
really afraid of losing
this?] Look calmly at the logical conclusion of the ego's thought system and judge whether its offering is really what you want, for this
is what it offers you. To
obtain this you are willing to attack the divinity of your brothers and thus lose sight of
yours. And you are willing to keep it hidden and to protect this idol, which you think will save you from the dangers which the idol itself
stands for, but which do not exist.
79 There are no idolaters in the Kingdom, but there is great appreciation for every Soul which God created because of the calm knowledge that each one is part of Him. God's Son knows no idols, but he
does know his Father. Health in this world is the counterpart of value in Heaven. It is not my merit that I contribute to you but my love, for you do not value yourselves. When you do not value yourself, you become sick, but
my value of you can heal you because the value of God's Son is one. When I said, "My peace I give unto you," I meant it. Peace came from God through me to
you. It was for you, although you did not ask.
80 When a brother is sick, it is because he is
not asking for peace and therefore does not know he
has it. The
acceptance of peace is the denial of illusion, and sickness
is an illusion. Yet every Son of God has the power to deny illusions
anywhere in the Kingdom merely by denying them completely in himself. I can heal you because I know you. I know your value
for you, and it is this value that makes you whole. A whole mind is not idolatrous and does not know of conflicting laws. I will heal you merely because I have only
one message, and it is true. Your faith in it will make you whole when you have faith in me.
81 I do not bring God's message with deception, and you will learn this as you learn that you always receive as much as you
accept. You could accept peace
now for everyone you meet and offer them perfect freedom from
all illusions because
you heard. But have no other gods before Him, or you will
not hear. God is not jealous of the gods you make, but
you are. You would save them and serve them because you believe that they made
you. You think they are your father because you are projecting onto them the fearful fact that
you made them to
replace God. Yet when they seem to speak to you, remember that nothing
can replace God, and whatever replacements you have attempted
are nothing.
82 Very simply, then, you may
believe you are afraid of nothingness, but you are really afraid of
nothing. And in
that awareness you are healed. You
will hear the god you listen to. You
made the god of sickness, and
by making him, you made yourself able to hear him. Yet you did not create him because he is
not the Will of the Father. He is therefore not eternal and will be
unmade for you the instant you signify your willingness to accept
only the eternal. If God has but one Son, there is but one God. You share reality with Him because reality is not divided. To accept other gods before Him is to place other images before
yourself.
83 You do not realize how much you listen to your gods and how vigilant you are on their behalf. Yet they exist only
because you honor them. Place honor where it is due, and peace will be yours. It is your inheritance from your
real Father. You cannot make your father, and the father you made did not make you. Honor is not due to illusions, for to honor them is to honor nothing. Yet fear is not due them either, for nothing cannot be fearful. You have chosen to fear love
because of its perfect harmlessness, and because of this fear, you have been willing to give up your own perfect helpfulness and your own perfect Help.
84 Only at the altar of God will you find peace. And this altar is in you because God put it there. His Voice still calls you to return, and He will be heard when you place no other gods before Him. You can give up the god of sickness for your brothers; in fact, you would
have to do so if you give him up for yourself. For if you see him anywhere, you have accepted him. And if you accept him, you
will bow down and worship him because he was made as God's replacement. He is the belief that you can
choose which god is real. Although it is perfectly clear that this has nothing to do with reality, it is equally clear that it has
everything to do with reality as you perceive it.
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