DAILY LESSON

 

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¹Perhaps it is not yet quite clear to you that each decision that you make is one between a grievance and a miracle. Each grievance stands like a dark shield of hate before the miracle it would conceal. And as you raise it up before your eyes, you will not see the miracle beyond. Yet all the while it waits for you in light, but you behold your grievances instead. 

²Today we go beyond the grievances to look upon the miracle instead. We will reverse the way you see by not allowing sight to stop before it sees. We will not wait before the shield of hate, but lay it down and gently lift our eyes in silence to behold the Son of God. 

³He waits for you behind your grievances, and as you lay them down he will appear in shining light where each one stood before. For every grievance is a block to sight, and as it lifts, you see the Son of God where he has always been. He stands in light, but you were in the dark. Each grievance made the darkness deeper, and you could not see. 

⁴Today we will attempt to see God's Son. We will not let ourselves be blind to him; we will not look upon our grievances. So is the seeing of the world reversed, as we look out toward truth, away from fear. 

⁵We will select one person you have used as target for your grievances and lay the grievances aside and look at him. Someone perhaps you fear and even hate; someone you think you love who angers you; someone you call a friend, but whom you see as difficult at times or hard to please-demanding, irritating, or untrue to the ideal he should accept as his according to the role you set for him. 

⁶You know the one to choose; his name has crossed your mind already. He will be the one of whom we ask God's Son be shown to us. Through seeing him behind the grievances that we have held against him, you will learn that what lay hidden while you saw him not is there in everyone and can be seen. He who was enemy is more than friend when he is freed to take the holy role the Holy Spirit has assigned to him. Let him be savior unto you today. Such is his role in God your Father's plan. 

⁷Our longer practice periods today will see him in this role. We will attempt to hold him in our mind, first as you now consider him. We will review his faults, the difficulties you have had with him, the pain he caused you, his neglect, and all the little and the larger hurts he gave. We will regard his body with its flaws and better points as well, and we will think of his mistakes and even of his "sins." 

⁸

  You have appointed as the one for me
  To ask to lead me to the holy light
  In which he stands, that I may join with him.

¹⁰The body's eyes are closed, and as you think of him who grieved you, let your mind be shown the light in him beyond your grievances. What you have asked for cannot be denied. Your savior has been waiting long for this. He would be free and make his freedom yours. The Holy Spirit leans from him to you, seeing no separation in God's Son. And what you see through Him will free you both. 

¹¹Be very quiet now and look upon your shining savior. No dark grievances obscure the sight of him. You have allowed the Holy Spirit to express through him the role God gave Him that you might be saved. God thanks you for these quiet times today in which you laid your images aside and looked upon the miracle of love the Holy Spirit showed you in their place. The world and Heaven join in thanking you, for not one Thought of God but must rejoice as you are saved and all the world with you. 

¹²We will remember this throughout the day and take the role assigned to us as part of God's salvation plan, and not our own. Temptation falls away when we allow each one we meet to save us and refuse to hide his light behind our grievances. To everyone you meet and to the ones you think of or remember from the past, allow the role of savior to be given that you may share it with them. For you both, and all the sightless ones as well, we pray: 

ACIM Edmonton - Sarah's Reflections 

Love and blessings, Sarah 

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Quotes in this article are from Foundation for Inner Peace edition; To locate the same quotes in the 'Original Edition', use this link:  http://www.jcim.net/acim_us/Acim.php    

A Course in Miracles   
TEXT 

Chapter Seven

The Consistency of the Kingdom

VI. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind             

³⁹ The body is nothing more than a framework for developing abilities. It is therefore a means for developing potentials, which is quite apart from what the potential is used for. That is a decision. The effects of the ego's decision in this matter are so apparent that they need no elaboration here, but the Holy Spirit's decision to use the body only for communication has such a direct connection with healing that it does need clarification. The unhealed healer obviously does not understand his own vocation.

⁴⁰ Only minds communicate. Since the ego cannot obliterate the impulse to communicate because it is also the impulse to create, the ego can only teach you that the body can both communicate and create and therefore does not need the mind. The ego thus tries to teach you that the body can act like the mind and is therefore self-sufficient. Yet we have learned that behavior is not the level for either teaching or learning. This must be so, since you can act in accordance with what you do not believe. To do this, however, will weaken you as teachers and learners because, as has been repeatedly emphasized, you teach what you do believe. An inconsistent lesson will be poorly taught and poorly learned. If you teach both sickness and healing, you are both a poor teacher and a poor learner.

⁴¹ Healing is the one ability which everyone can develop and must develop if he is to be healed. Healing is the Holy Spirit's form of communication and the only one He knows. He recognizes no other, because He does not accept the ego's confusion of mind and body. Minds can communicate, but they cannot hurt. The body in the service of the ego can hurt other bodies, but this cannot occur unless the body has already been confused with the mind. This fact, too, can be used either for healing or for magic, but you must remember that magic is always the belief that healing is harmful. This is its totally insane premise, and so it proceeds accordingly.

⁴² Healing only strengthens. Magic always tries to weaken. Healing perceives nothing in the healer that everyone else does not share with him. Magic always sees something "special" in the healer which he believes he can offer as a gift to someone who does not have it. He may believe that the gift comes from God to Him, but it is quite evident that he does not understand God if he thinks he has something that others lack. You might well ask, then, why some healing can result from this kind of thinking, and there is a reason for this.

⁴³ However misguided the "magical healer" may be, he is also trying to help. He is conflicted and unstable, but at times he is offering something to the Sonship, and the only thing the Sonship can accept is healing. When the so-called "healing" works, then, the impulse to help and to be helped have coincided. This is coincidental because the healer may not be experiencing himself as truly helpful at the time, but the belief that he is, in the mind of another, helps him.

⁴⁴ The Holy Spirit does not work by chance, and healing that is of Him always works. Unless the healer always heals by Him, the results will vary. Yet healing itself is consistence since only consistence is conflict-free, and only the conflict-free are whole. By accepting exceptions and acknowledging that he can sometimes heal and sometimes not, the healer is obviously accepting inconsistency. He is therefore in conflict and teaching conflict. Can anything of God not be for all and for always?

⁴⁵ Love is incapable of any exceptions. Only if there is fear does the idea of exceptions seem to be meaningful. Exceptions are fearful because they are made by fear. The "fearful healer" is a contradiction in terms and is therefore a concept which only a conflicted mind could possibly perceive as meaningful. Fear does not gladden. Healing does. Fear always makes exceptions. Healing never does. Fear produces dissociation because it induces separation. Healing always produces harmony because it proceeds from integration.

⁴⁶ Healing is predictable because it can be counted on. Everything that is of God can be counted on because everything of God is wholly real. Healing can be counted on because it is inspired by His Voice and is in accord with His laws. Yet if healing is consistence, it cannot be inconsistently understood. Understanding means consistence because God means consistence. Since that is His meaning, it is also yours. Your meaning cannot be out of accord with His because your whole meaning, and your only meaning, comes from His and is like His. God cannot be out of accord with Himself, and you cannot be out of accord with Him. You cannot separate your self from your Creator, Who created you by sharing His being with you.

⁴⁷ The unhealed healer wants gratitude from his brothers, but he is not grateful to them. This is because he thinks he is giving something to them and is not receiving something equally desirable in return. His teaching is limited because he is learning so little. His healing lesson is limited by his own ingratitude, which is a lesson in sickness. Learning is constant and so vital in its power for change that a Son of God can recognize his power in one instant and change the world in the next. That is because by changing his mind he has changed the most powerful device that was ever created for change.

⁴⁸ This in no way contradicts the changelessness of mind as God created it, but you think that you have changed it as long as you learn through the ego. This does place you in a position of needing to learn a lesson which seems contradictory-you must learn to change your mind about your mind. Only by this can you learn that it is changeless. When you heal that is exactly what you are learning. You are recognizing the changeless mind in your brother by realizing that he could not have changed his mind. That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in him. It is only the Holy Spirit in him that never changes His mind. He himself must think he can, or he would not perceive himself as sick. He therefore does not know what his self is.

⁴⁹ If you see only the changeless in him, you have not really changed him at all. By changing your mind about his for him, you help him undo the change his ego thinks it has made in him. As you can hear two voices, so you can see in two ways. One way shows you an image, or better, an idol which you may worship out of fear but which you will never love. The other shows you only truth, which you will love because you will understand it. Understanding is appreciation because what you understand you can identify with, and by making it part of you, you have accepted it with love.

⁵⁰ That is how God Himself created you-in understanding, in appreciation, and in love. The ego is totally unable to understand this, because it does not understand what it makes; it does not appreciate it; and it does not love it. It incorporates to take away. It literally believes that every time it deprives someone of something, it has increased. We have spoken often of the increase of the Kingdom by your creations, which can only be created as you were. The whole glory and perfect joy that is the Kingdom lies in you to give. Do you not want to give it? 

⁵¹ You cannot forget the Father because I am with you, and I cannot forget Him. To forget me is to forget yourself and Him Who created you. Our brothers are forgetful. That is why they need your remembrance of me and Him who created me. Through this remembrance, you can change their minds about themselves, as I can change yours. Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours. I do not want to share my body in communion, because that is to share nothing. [Would I try to share an illusion with the most holy children of a most holy Father?] Yet I do want to share my mind with you because we are of One Mind and that Mind is ours.

⁵² See only this Mind everywhere because only this is everywhere and in everything. It is everything because it encompasses all things within itself. Blessed are you who perceive only this, because you perceive only what is true. Come therefore unto me and learn of the truth in you. The Mind we share is shared by all our brothers, and as we see them truly, they will be healed. Let your mind shine with mine upon their minds, and by our gratitude to them make them aware of the light in them.

⁵³ This light will shine back upon you and on the whole Sonship because this is your proper gift to God. He will accept it and give it to the Sonship because it is acceptable to Him and therefore to His Sons. This is the true communion of the Spirit, Who sees the altar of God in everyone and, by bringing it to your appreciation, calls upon you to love God and His creations. You can appreciate the Sonship only as one. This is part of the Law of Creation and therefore governs all thought.

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