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LESSON 235 AUGUST 23 SATURDAY
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Daily Lesson 235
What is Salvation
Sarah's Reflections
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Beautiful Innocence
  
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE 
"THE INNER PICTURE"
IV. "Faith, Belief and Vision"

37 Those who believe in sin must think the Holy Spirit asks for sacrifice, for this is how they think their purpose is accomplished. Brothers, the Holy Spirit knows that sacrifice brings nothing. He makes no bargains. And if you seek to limit Him, you will hate Him because you are afraid. The gift that He has given you is more than anything that stands this side of Heaven. The instant for its recognition is at hand. Join your awareness to what has been already joined. The faith you give each other can accomplish this. For He Who loves the world is seeing it for you without one spot of sin upon it and in the innocence which makes the sight of it as beautiful as Heaven. 

                              

DAILY LESSON

SonShip Workbook  

L e s s o n  235

God in His mercy wills that I be saved.

 

<AUDIO><VIDEO>

Voice and Music by CIMS SonShip Radio
GUIDANCE from ELDER BROTHER
      

   I need but look upon all things that seem

   to hurt me, and with perfect certainty

   assure myself, "God wills that I be saved

   from this," and merely watch them disappear.

   I need but keep in mind my Father's Will

   for me is only happiness, to find

   that only happiness has come to me.

   And I need but remember that His Love

   surrounds His Son and keeps his sinlessness

   forever perfect, to be sure that I

   am saved and safe forever in His arms.

   I am the Son He loves. And I am saved

   because God in His mercy wills it so.

 

    Father, Your holiness is mine. Your Love

    created me, and made my sinlessness

    forever part of You. I have no guilt

    or sin in me, for there is none in You


       ~ Original Handscript of ACIM October 7, 1970        

WHAT IS SALVATION?
What is Salvation  
<AUDIO><VIDEO>
Voice and Music by CIMS SonShip Radio
 
   Salvation is a promise, made by God,

   that you would find your way to Him at last.

   It cannot but be kept. It guarantees

   that time will have an end, and all the thoughts

   that have been born in time will end as well.

   God's Word is given every mind that thinks

   that it has separate thoughts, and will replace

   these thoughts of conflict with the Thought of peace.

 

   The Thought of peace was given to God's Son

   the instant that his mind had thought of war.

   There was no need for such a Thought before,

   for peace was given without opposite,

   and merely was. But when the mind is split,

   there is a need of healing. So the Thought

   Which has the power to heal the split became

   a part of every fragment of the mind

   which still was one, but failed to recognize

   its oneness. Now it did not know itself,

   and thought its own identity was lost.

 

   Salvation is undoing in the sense

   that it does nothing, failing to support

   the world of dreams and malice. Thus it lets

   illusions go. By not supporting them,

   it merely lets them quietly go down

   to dust. And what they hid is now revealed;

   an altar to the holy Name of God,

   whereon His Word is written, with the gifts

   of your forgiveness laid before It, and

   the memory of God not far behind.

 

   Let us come daily to this holy place,

   and spend a while together. Here we share

   our final dream. It is a dream in which

   there is no sorrow, for it holds a hint

   of all the glory given us by God.

   The grass is pushing through the soil, the trees

   are budding now, and birds have come to live

   within their branches. Earth is being born

   again in new perception. Night has gone,

   and we have come together in the light.

 

   From here we give salvation to the world,

   for it is here salvation was received.

   The song of our rejoicing is the call

   to all the world that freedom is returned,

   that time is almost over, and God's Son

   has but an instant more to wait until

   his Father is remembered, dreams are done,

   eternity has shined away the world,

   and only Heaven now exists at all.

  

 

  ORIGINAL HAND SCRIPT ~ October 1, 1970

 

ACIM Edmonton - Sarah's Reflections 

ACIM Edmonton, CA

Lesson 235
God in His mercy wills that I be saved.

Sarah's Commentary:

"God in His mercy wills that I be saved." The question then arises, "saved from what?" and Jesus tells us that it is to be saved from all things that seem to hurt me. (W.235.1.1) What hurts me are my own thoughts, my opinions, my interpretations and my judgments. How willing am I to be saved from my perception that I can be hurt? If His will for me is only happiness (1.2), then the way I am seeing a situation that seems to cause me distress, must be my decision which conflicts with God's Will for me.

We can't mar our own perfection as given us by God in our creation as His Son. The prayer is just another way of talking about this as we affirm again that Love is what created us and made us sinless forever, always perfect and eternally safe. Clearly we don't feel that way much of the time. The reason that we don't is because the ego always speaks first. In other words, the ego gives us its interpretation of everything first. It tells us to blame, to judge, to value our thoughts and opinions, which all support differences and specialness.

We think our reality is that of a body and personality relating to 'others' as separate entities from us. As a result, we are in competition with each other trying to achieve our happiness at their expense. What if we are wrong about ourselves? Jesus assures us that we are. He says that while we think our separate will is the source of our happiness, it is actually the source of our pain and misery. Because we are confused about who we are, we don't know what we are doing, where we are going, what our best interests are and how to meet our real needs. Give over the picture that you hold of yourself for a moment. Open yourself to question your perception of who you are. Jesus tells us that "God's will is all there is." (Clarification of Terms.3.6.1) Therefore the separate will that we think is ours does not even exist. That thought can terrify us. We want our existence. That is why we are here. The call to know ourselves as pure, innocent, and joyful beings of peace and love is also very strong. If God is all there is, then we must be one with Him.

In Chapter 31, "The Simplicity of Salvation," Jesus says "How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not true now, and never will be. The impossible [separation from God] has not occurred, and can have no effects. And that is all. Can this be hard to learn by anyone who wants it to be true?" (T.31.I.1.1-5) So on the level of where we think we are, it is all about our willingness to consider how wrong we have been about ourselves. "Only unwillingness to learn it could make such an easy lesson difficult." (T.31.I.1.6)

Our unwillingness points us to the authority problem. We think we have made another will, and we give power to that will by our belief. But if all that we believe is not true now, then we can deny the power of anything to hurt us.

Salvation, as taught in this course, is about healing our perception that we are separate, deficient, victims of the world. None of this is real, but it is not helpful to us just to be told that it is all unreal or that it is all illusion. Why? Because right now we believe in the reality of what we see, feel and experience. We believe that our body is who we are, and we cling to this self that we believe we have made. Denying what we believe would not be helpful to us. Yes, it is all unreal. None of it has any meaning, but while we are still believing in the reality of our bodies and the world, it is not helpful to deny what we are holding as true. What is helpful is to look at our beliefs, our concepts, our values, our feelings and our perceptions and be willing to question them. When we see that perhaps we are wrong in how we see them, we will be more willing to ask the Holy Spirit for His interpretation. We will become more willing to step aside from our perspectives and look to the truth within.

In lesson 70 we are told that guilt and salvation are in our minds and nowhere else. "When you realize that all guilt is solely an invention of your mind, you also realize that guilt and salvation must be in the same place. In understanding this you are saved." (W.PI.70.1.5-6) Yet what we have done is to put the responsibility for the source of our pain outside of our minds. We make people, events and circumstances outside of ourselves responsible for how we feel. We make them the guilty ones instead of looking at the guilt in our own minds that we have projected on them. What that does though is make us feel like helpless victims. If indeed salvation comes from me, and it is of my choosing, then I am able, at any time, to choose to know the truth about myself. No one can save me but me. No workshop leader, no guru, no course, no psychotherapist, not even Jesus can save me. It is all about my choice, and that choice is reflected in my willingness to look at my thoughts, take responsibility for them, recognize that everything I see is a projection of my own guilt mirrored back to me, and be willing to release it. I am not saying that there are not teachers that help us in pointing us to the truth and inspiring and motivating us, only that the work must be done by us.

Jesus tells us that, if God in His mercy wills that I be saved, then it is already done. As he reminds us in lesson 229, "'Love, which created me, is what I am'. Now need I seek no more. Love has prevailed." (W.PII.229.1.2-3) He has kept my Identity untouched and sinless.  Nothing we can do can ever mar our perfection. So why do we need salvation? We are reminded in Chapter 11, "As God's creation It [salvation] is yours, and belonging to you It is His. Your Self does not need salvation, but your mind needs to learn what salvation is. You are not saved from anything, but you are saved for glory. Glory is your inheritance, given you by your Creator that you might extend it. Yet if you hate part of your Self [another brother or sister] all your understanding is lost, because you are looking on what God created as yourself without love." (T.11.IV.1.2-6)

In other words, any hatred, dislike, and anger, we have toward any of our brothers and sisters are what keep us from knowing that we are already saved. Such thoughts hide the truth of who we are from our minds. "Therefore, look only to the power that God gave to save you, remembering that it is yours because it is His, and join with your brothers in His peace." (T.11.IV.2.5)

The ego also developed a plan for our salvation. Its plan is to hold grievances against others so that the guilt in our minds would be seen to rest on them rather than on ourselves. So we play the game of blaming everyone else for our circumstance. The solution offered by the ego to get rid of our guilt actually maintains it because what the ego's proposed solution does is keep the guilt alive in our minds rather than undoing it. So while blaming others seems to save us from our guilt, it only maintains it. "Ideas leave not their source." (W.PI.167.3.6) This is such good news because it affirms that we are not the victims of the world we see.

The ego's guidance is to do everything on our own. Part of the ego's seductiveness is that it tries to persuade us to continue to believe that if we simply select the right combination of options from all available ones, we can be happy. It might be the right relationship, the right career, the right place to live, the right investment, the right numbers on the lottery tickets, the right job, or any combination of the above. But what the ego keeps hidden from us is the underlying content of these choices, which is sin, guilt and fear and a belief in separate interests. "The dreams you think you like would hold you back as much as those in which the fear is seen. For every dream is but a dream of fear, no matter what the form it seems to take. The fear is seen within, without, or both. Or it can be disguised in pleasant form. But never is it absent from the dream, for fear is the material of dreams, from which they all are made." (T. 29.IV.2.1-5)

Now we turn to another Guide, the Holy Spirit who offers us the memory of God's Love for us. Only then can we make another choice. In the world, all of our choices lead us nowhere. Jesus shows us that the only really meaningful choice we can make in time is to allow the Holy Spirit's purpose to guide us whenever we make a decision. Instead of looking for the perfect ego dream as we see it, we are learning to release our own judgments on how everything should be. When we release outcomes and expectations, we are learning to live in the flow of God's grace. What that requires is to recognize that we don't know our own best interests. We can't even identify what is a gain and what is a loss.

The lesson offers us a beautiful opportunity today to use as a practice when we are tempted to get upset. If I see something disturbing to my mind, I can immediately respond with "God wills that I be saved from this." (W.335.1.1) We can choose to look at the situation from outside of the dream, from above the battleground. From this perspective, we can see the unreality of it all. None of it has any meaning. When we withdraw support from the illusions of war and malice, they go down to dust and we see the beauty of our brother's innocence and thus our own.

So today we go together in confidence that God is on the side of our happiness. I need but look upon all things that seem to hurt me and with perfect certainty and conviction say, "God wills that I be saved from this." (W.335.1.1) Anything that is causing you pain and unhappiness is grist for application of this lesson. Tell yourself with assurance that God would not have you suffer. God only wants your happiness. What this means is that if our experience is anything but happiness, then we can step back and realize that we must be seeing wrongly. God's Will for us is perfect happiness. Feel His protection and safety all through the day. Look at what you are projecting onto others. Realize that there is nothing in the world that can affect you unless you give it the power to do so. Bring anything that seems hurtful to you to the Correction of the Holy Spirit. Look without guilt or fear at everything that seems to be upsetting to you today and watch it disappear. Remind yourself again and again about His kindness and love for you. Let His Love be felt surrounding you, reminding you of your innocence, which is not of your making but has been given in your creation.

"Nothing has ever happened to disturb the peace of God the Father and the Son. This we accept as wholly true today." (W.234.1.4-5)

Love and blessings, Sarah 

huemmert@shaw.ca

 

Text quotes in this article are from the Foundation for Inner Peace edition; To locate the same quotes in the 'ACIM Original Edition', use this link:  http://www.jcim.net/acim_us/Acim.php    
[Use 'Advanced Search' and 'Exact Phrase' option, top right]

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IV. Faith, Belief, and Vision      

29 All special relationships have sin as their goal. For they are bargains with reality, toward which the seeming union is adjusted. Forget not this-to bargain is to set a limit, and any brother with whom you have a limited relationship you hate. You may attempt to keep the bargain in the name of "fairness," sometimes demanding payment of yourself, perhaps more often of the other. Thus in the "fairness" you attempt to ease the guilt that comes from the accepted purpose of the relationship. And that is why the Holy Spirit must change its purpose to make it useful to him and harmless unto you.

 

30 If you accept this change, you have accepted the idea of making room for truth. The source of sin is gone. You may imagine that you still experience its effects, but it is not your purpose, and you no longer want it. No one allows a purpose to be replaced while he desires it, for nothing is so cherished and protected as is a goal the mind accepts. This it will follow, grimly or happily, but always with faith and with the persistence that faith inevitably brings. The power of faith is never recognized if it is placed in sin. But it is always recognized if it is placed in love.

 

31 Why is it strange to you that faith can move mountains? This is indeed a little feat for such a power. For faith can keep the Son of God in chains as long as he believes he is in chains. And when he is released from them, it will be simply because he no longer believes in them, withdrawing faith that they can hold him and placing it in his freedom instead. It is impossible to place equal faith in opposite directions. What faith you give to sin you take away from holiness. And what you offer holiness has been removed from sin.

 

32 Faith and belief and vision are the means by which the goal of holiness is reached. Through them the Holy Spirit leads you to the real world and away from all illusions where your faith was laid. This is His direction, the only one He ever sees. And when you wander, He reminds you there is but one. His faith and His belief and vision are all for you. And when you have accepted them completely instead of yours, you will have need of them no longer. For faith and vision and belief are meaningful only before the state of certainty is reached. In Heaven they are unknown. Yet Heaven is reached through them.

 

33 It is impossible that the Son of God lack faith, but he can choose where he would have it be. Faithlessness is not a lack of faith, but faith in nothing. Faith given to illusions does not lack power, for by it does the Son of God believe that he is powerless. Thus is he faithless to himself, but strong in faith in his illusions about himself. For faith, perception, and belief you made as means for losing certainty and finding sin. This mad direction was your choice, and by your faith in what you chose, you made what you desired.

 

34 The Holy Spirit has a use for all the means for sin by which you sought to find it. But as He uses them, they lead away from sin because His purpose lies in the opposite direction. He sees the means you use but not the purpose for which you made them. He would not take them from you, for He sees their value as a means for what He wills for you. You made perception that you might choose among your brothers and seek for sin with them. The Holy Spirit sees perception as a means to teach you that the vision of a holy relationship is all you want to see. Then will you give your faith to holiness, desiring and believing in it because of your desire.

 

35 Faith and belief become attached to vision, as all the means that once served sin are redirected now toward holiness. For what you think is sin is limitation, and whom you try to limit to the body you hate because you fear. In your refusal to forgive him, you would condemn him to the body because the means for sin are dear to you. And so the body has your faith and your belief. But holiness would set your brother free, removing hatred by removing fear, not as a symptom, but at its source.

 

36 Those who would free their brothers from the body can have no fear. They have renounced the means for sin by choosing to let all limitations be removed. Desiring to look upon their brothers in holiness, the power of belief and faith goes far beyond the body, supporting vision, not obstructing it. But first they chose to recognize how much their faith had limited their understanding of the world, desiring to place its power elsewhere should another point of view be given them. The miracles which follow this decision are also born of faith. For all who choose to look away from sin are given vision and are led to holiness.

 

37 Those who believe in sin must think the Holy Spirit asks for sacrifice, for this is how they think their purpose is accomplished. Brothers, the Holy Spirit knows that sacrifice brings nothing. He makes no bargains. And if you seek to limit Him, you will hate Him because you are afraid. The gift that He has given you is more than anything that stands this side of Heaven. The instant for its recognition is at hand. Join your awareness to what has been already joined. The faith you give each other can accomplish this. For He Who loves the world is seeing it for you without one spot of sin upon it and in the innocence which makes the sight of it as beautiful as Heaven.

 

38 Your faith in sacrifice has given it great power in your sight, except you do not realize you cannot see because of it. For sacrifice must be exacted of a body and by another body. The mind could neither ask it nor receive it of itself. And no more could the body. The intention is in the mind, which tries to use the body to carry out the means for sin in which the mind believes. Thus is the joining of mind and body an inescapable belief of those who value sin. And so is sacrifice invariably a means for limitation and thus for hate.

 

39 Think you the Holy Spirit is concerned with this? He gives not what it is His purpose to lead you from. You think He would deprive you for your good. But "good" and "deprivation" are opposites and cannot meaningfully join in any way. It is like saying that the moon and sun are one because they come with night and day, and so they must be joined. Yet sight of one is but the sign the other has disappeared from sight. Nor is it possible that what gives light be one with what depends on darkness to be seen. Neither demands the sacrifice of the other. Yet on the absence of the other does each depend.

 

40 The body was made to be a sacrifice to sin, and in the darkness so it still is seen. Yet in the light of vision, it is looked upon quite differently. You can have faith in it to serve the Holy Spirit's goal and give it power to serve as means to help the blind to see. But in their seeing, they look past it, as do you. The faith and the belief you gave it belongs beyond. You gave perception and belief and faith from mind to body. Let them now be given back to what produced them and can use them still to save itself from what it made.

 

 

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