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LESSON 359 DEC 25 THURSDAY
Daily Quote
What am I?
Daily Lesson 359
Sarah's Reflections
MANUAL #21, #22
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In the beginning it tells us, "This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean
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Course in Miracles Society (CIMS) is an international group of Course students and teachers organized to discover, authenticate and propagate the Divine Teachings of A Course in Miracles.

 

As students, we seek to increase our knowledge of Jesus' words and to deepen our experience of His teachings.

As teachers, we work to circulate the message of
A Course in Miracles throughout the world by our words, by our deeds, and by the example of our lives.

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Birth of Holiness 
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A COURSE IN MIRACLES
The Purpose of Time
    

In this season (Christmas), which celebrates the birth of holiness into this world, join with me, who decided for holiness for you. It is our task together to restore the awareness of magnitude to the host whom God appointed for Himself. It is beyond all your littleness to give the gift of God, but not beyond you. For God would give Himself through you. He reaches from you to everyone and beyond everyone to His Son's creations, but without leaving you. Far beyond your little world but still in you, He extends forever. Yet He brings all his extensions to you as host to Him.        

WHAT AM I?
What Am I  
<AUDIO><VIDEO> 
Voice and Music by CIMS SonShip Radio


*IAMBIC PENTAMETER*

What is 'Iambic Pentameter'? 

    I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole,

    shining in the reflection of His Love.

    In me is His creation sanctified

    and guaranteed eternal life. In me

    is love perfected, fear impossible,

    and joy established without opposite.

    I am the holy home of God Himself.

    I am the Heaven where His Love abides.

    I am His holy Sinlessness Itself,

    for in my purity abides His own.

 

   Our use for words is almost over now.

   Yet in the final days of this one year

   we gave to God together, you and I,

   we found a single purpose that we shared.

   And thus you joined with me. So what I am

   are you as well. The truth of what we are

   is not for words to speak of nor describe.

   Yet we can realize our function here,

   and words can speak of this, and teach it, too,

   if we exemplify the words in us.

 

   We are the bringers of salvation. We

   accept our part as Saviours of the world,

   which through our joint forgiveness is redeemed.

   And this, our gift, is therefore given us.

   We look on everyone as brother, and

   perceive all things as kindly and as good.

   We do not seek a function that is past

   the gates of Heaven. Knowledge will return

   when we have done our part. We are concerned

   only with giving welcome to the truth.

 

   Ours are the eyes through which Christ's vision sees

   a world redeemed from every thought of sin.

   Ours are the ears which hear the Voice of God

   proclaim the world as sinless. Ours the minds

   which join together as we bless the world.

   And from the oneness that we have attained

   we call to all our brothers, asking them

   to share our peace and consummate our joy.

 

   We are the holy messengers of God,

   who speak for Him. And carrying His Word

   to everyone whom He has sent to us,

   we learn that It is written on our hearts.

   And thus our minds are changed about the aim

   for which we came and which we seek to serve.

   We bring glad tidings to the Son of God,

   who thought he suffered. Now is he redeemed.

   And as he sees the gate of Heaven stand

   open before him, he will enter in

   and disappear into the Heart of God.

 

   ~ Original Hand Script of ACIM February 10, 1971      

DAILY LESSON

ACIM Lessons  

L e s s o n  359

God's answer is some form of peace. All pain
Is healed; all misery replaced with joy.
All prison doors are opened. And all sin
Is understood as merely a mistake. 
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    Father, today we will forgive Your world,
    and let creation be Your own. We have
    misunderstood all things. But we have not

    made sinners of the holy Sons of God.

    Whom You created sinless so abides

    forever and forever. Such are we.

    And we rejoice to learn that we have made

    mistakes which have no real effects on us.

    Sin is impossible, and on this fact

    forgiveness rests upon a certain base

    more solid than the shadow world we see.

    Help us forgive, for we would be redeemed.

    Help us forgive, for we would be at peace.

     ~ Original Hand-script of ACIM  

            

ACIM Edmonton - Sarah's Reflections 

ACIM Edmonton, CA

Lesson 359
God's answer is some form of peace. All pain
Is healed; all misery replaced with joy.
All prison doors are opened. And all sin
Is understood as merely a mistake.

Sarah's Commentary:

We know we have received God's answer to our prayer of the heart when we have peace, when pain is healed and when we experience joy in the place of any kind of sorrow, grief, worry, distress. It is this shift in the mind that is what the miracle is. It is when our will, which is imprisoned by our angst, our worry, our sadness or whatever else blocks our joy, is set free. We have the answer now because it is already within our minds, where it has always been. When we don't experience it, it is because we are blocking it. When the blocks to love are removed through our willingness to surrender our need to be right, our will is set free. In that freedom we experience the oneness with God's Will, which is our own.

Then no conflict is possible. "All prison doors are opened." (W.359) The chains that have kept us bound to the ego are now released. The realization dawns on our minds that nothing we have ever done, or ever could do, can change our reality. We realize that "all sin is merely a mistake." (W.359) The mistake we made was to believe the lies of the ego. In other words, we listen to and believe our own thoughts. Only we can choose not to listen to what is false. Only when we realize that there is another way of seeing will we recognize this choice. Acceptance of the truth within our minds comes though forgiveness. It comes when we put all that is false on the altar for healing. With this, space is made for the truth to come in. In the acceptance of the truth within, love, is extended through us to all of our brothers.
  
The love of this world is all special love. It is focused on those whom we believe can meet our needs. Special love has an object and it has a focus. "Ego illusions are quite specific, although the mind is naturally abstract." (T.4.VII.1.2)(ACIM OE T.4.VIII.94) We determine "how, what and with whom communication is judged to be worth undertaking." (T.4.VII.4.2)(ACIM OE T.4.VIII.98) Special love thus comes with fear of loss, and because we have focused our special love on specific people, we need to do the forgiveness work specifically with those people. Jesus will then generalize our learning to everyone. God's Love is non-specific. God's Love is inclusive where no one loses and there is nothing to fear. It is who we are. When this love is extended through us, freedom is given all brothers. Thus their prison doors are opened, whether they choose to accept it at that time or not.
  
We see that their sins are merely mistakes, just like our own. Now, instead of seeing our brother as intentionally trying to hurt us, we see instead someone who is mistaken and calling for our love and understanding. They know not that they have another choice as their only option seems to be to listen to the voice of the ego. They have simply forgotten who they are. The same spark is in them as is in us. Their call is our call, and this makes a difference as to how we respond. Though we may see that they are intentionally causing harm, it is also because they too have misunderstood who they are, just as we have. We are all the same. When we can overlook their mistakes and remember who they are, we know that for ourselves as well. While no real harm is done because it is all just a dream, and nothing can change our pristine nature, in this seeming reality we certainly can inflict harm. Thus it is not helpful to dismiss our hurtful behavior as unimportant.

The lesson reminds us that we remain as we were created. We cannot be anything but sinless because we were created in God's image and, like Him, we share in His Holiness. We are God's Son. This will dawn on our minds more and more as we do the forgiveness work, but we require help from outside of the closed system of the ego. "But there is need for help beyond yourself as you are circumscribed by false beliefs of your Identity, which God alone established in reality." (Clarification of Terms 5.1.2) When we call on the Holy Spirit, He releases the world from all we thought it was and we experience the solid foundation of His Love. This foundation rests on reality rather than illusion. "Sin is impossible, and on this fact forgiveness rests upon a certain base more solid than the shadow world we see." (W.359.1.7) It seems like forgiveness has no real strength against a solid world. In this world, anger seems to us to have more power than love, but we have it backwards. It is the world that is nothing and forgiveness has all the power of God behind it. This is so different from how we see now, but Jesus assures us that we can trust in the power of forgiveness.
  
To us the illusion seems so very solid and intractable. God's world seems less certain and less solid. We are not sure that forgiveness has the power that we give to attack. "Its whole function, in the end, is to help the patient deal with one fundamental error; the belief that anger brings him something he really wants, and that by justifying attack he is protecting himself." (Psychotherapy Pamphlet.2.IN.1.5) Yes, we have indeed made mistakes. We have hurt people intentionally. We have tried to win at our brother's expense, but none of this has changed who we are as created by God. Jesus says that we should rejoice that this is so. He is not saying to deny your mistakes. No. It is not that we should see all of our mistakes as good, only to see that they are not sins and they can be seen as helpful for our healing. It is not about doing whatever we want and dismissing it all as just a mistake. We need to see our true motives, but recognize that they have no real effect on us. That is why we can rejoice that everything can be used to remember who we are. That is the only purpose this world has. It is to help us to come back to our Self.
 
"Help us forgive, for we would be redeemed. Help us forgive, for we would be at peace." (W.359.8-9) We do need the Holy Spirit's help because we have made the error real. We think real harm has happened and is thus too difficult to overlook. We think we must forgive others rather than our own judgments of the situation. We don't recognize that it is our guilt that is acted out in the world. To us it seems like attack has happened and caused real harm. All of our senses give us pretty clear evidence of this. That is why we need the help from Someone outside of this perceptual realm. He is the One that brings the miracle. Our part is to bring our anger, our judgments and our hateful thoughts to Him. When we pray with sincerity for help in shifting our perception of events and move us to a changed perception, He gives us the answer. The answer is always a shift in our perception.
 
This blessed day of Christmas, we are asked to lay all of our burdens at the feet of Jesus. He asks no adulation. He has no ego. He only wants us to release our problems and issues to him that we may be freed of our prison house. He asks that we recognize that we are like him and the birth of Christ in him is the birth that we will know in ourselves as we release our guilt and fear. God's Word "is written on our hearts." (W.PII.Q14.5.1) What that means is that His Word is the very fabric of our being. Our function is discover the truth of this so we can bring this message to everyone who is sent to us by being an example of a mind that has chosen the Holy Spirit and now can bring peace. The message to our brothers is that they are sinless regardless of their mistakes. To see them as sinless means that we must first see how we are judging our brother and ask for help to see him differently. This is the purpose of our time in this world. It is to do the healing of our minds so that Love can extend through us. It is to recognize that the law of love is to give as we would receive so that ultimately we can know and recognize the true nature of our being. Our true will is being expressed when peace and love are extended through us.

May the angels watch over us today because this can be the day in which we can experience Christ's birth in us. It is therefore a holy day as any day can be. "Let all God's holy Thoughts surround me, and be still with me while Heaven's Son is born." (W.PII.303.1.2)

The ego is loud and boisterous in us. By finding the stillness in our minds, which is symbolized by the withdrawal from the world when giving birth, the truth is welcomed in. The ego does not want peace. Look at the ways we keep ourselves busy with the events of our lives and even more so at Christmas. Yet God's answer is some form of peace. It is the place of stillness in us. It is the holy ground, the altar to truth deep in our minds, waiting to be uncovered. It means that we need to take time from all of the activity and rest in God.

As we release the ego's darkness, we experience the light that we are. It is a question of willingness. "It is in your power to make this season holy, for it is in your power to make the time of Christ be now." (T.15.X.4.1)(ACIM OE T.15.X.94) May this day be one of peace and holiness that Jesus wants us to experience today and every day. It is a peace that we can choose anytime we release our grievances and allow the joy back into our minds. It is the coming of the Christ Self that we all share.

Love and blessings, Sarah

huemmert@shaw.ca

 

21. What is the Role of Words in Healing?

1 Strictly speaking, words play no part at all in healing. The motivating factor is prayer, or asking. What you ask for, you receive. But this refers to the prayer of the heart, not to the words you use in praying. Sometimes the words and the prayer are contradictory; sometimes they agree. It does not matter. God does not understand words, for they were made by separated minds to keep them in the illusion of separation. Words can be helpful, particularly for the beginner, in helping concentration and facilitating the exclusion or at least the control of extraneous thoughts. Let us not forget, however, that words are but symbols of symbols. They are thus twice removed from reality.

 

2 As symbols, words have quite specific references. Even when they seem most abstract, the picture that comes to mind is apt to be very concrete. Unless a specific referent does occur to the mind in conjunction with the word, the word has little or no practical meaning and thus cannot help the healing process. The prayer of the heart does not really ask for concrete things. It always requests some kind of experience, the specific things asked for being the bringers of the desired experience in the judgment of the asker. The words, then, are symbols for the things asked for, but the things themselves but stand for the experiences which are hoped for.

 

3 The prayer for things of this world will bring experiences of this world. If the prayer of the heart asks for this, this will be given because this will be received. It is impossible that the prayer of the heart remain unanswered in the perception of the one who asks. If he asks for the impossible, if he wants what does not exist or seeks for illusions in his heart, all this becomes his own. The power of his decision offers it to him, as he requests. Herein lie hell and Heaven. The sleeping Son of God has but this power left to him. It is enough. His words do not matter. Only the Word of God has any meaning because it symbolizes that which has no human symbols at all. The Holy Spirit alone understands what this Word stands for. And this, too, is enough.

 

4 Is the teacher of God then to avoid the use of words in his teaching? No, indeed. There are many who must be reached through words, being as yet unable to hear in silence. The teacher of God must, however, learn to use words in a new way. Gradually, he learns how to let his words be chosen for him by ceasing to decide for himself what he will say. This process is merely a special case of the workbook lesson "I will step back and let Him lead the way." The teacher of God accepts the words which are offered him and gives as he receives. He does not control the direction of his speaking. He listens and hears and speaks.

 

5 A major hindrance in this aspect of his learning is the teacher of God's fear about the validity of what he hears. And what he hears may indeed be quite startling. It may also seem to be quite irrelevant to the presented problem as he perceives it, and may, in fact, confront him with a situation that appears to be very embarrassing. All these are judgments which have no value. They are his own, coming from a shabby self-perception that he would leave behind. Judge not the words that come to you, but offer them in confidence. They are far wiser than your own. God's teachers have God's Word behind their symbols. And He Himself gives to the words they use the power of His Spirit, raising them from meaningless symbols to the call of Heaven itself.

22. How are Healing and Atonement Related?  

1 Healing and Atonement are not related; they are identical. There is no order of difficulty in miracles because there are no degrees of Atonement. It is the one complete concept possible in this world because it is the source of a wholly unified perception. Partial Atonement is a meaningless idea, just as special areas of hell in Heaven is inconceivable. Accept Atonement, and you are healed. Atonement is the Word of God. Accept His Word, and what remains to make sickness possible? Accept His Word, and every miracle has been accomplished. To forgive is to heal. The teacher of God has taken accepting the Atonement for himself as his only function. What is there, then, he cannot heal? What miracle can be withheld from him?

 

2 The progress of the teacher of God may be slow or rapid, depending on whether he recognizes the Atonement's inclusiveness or for a time excludes some problem areas from it. In some cases, there is a sudden and complete awareness of the perfect applicability of the lesson of the Atonement to all situations. This, however, is comparatively rare. The teacher of God may have accepted the function God has given him long before he has learned all that his acceptance holds out to him. It is only the end that is certain. Anywhere along the way, the necessary realization of inclusiveness may reach him. If the way seems long, let him be content. He has decided on the direction he will take. What more was asked of him? And having done what was required, would God withhold the rest?

 

3 That forgiveness is healing needs to be understood if the teacher of God is to make progress. The idea that a body can be sick is a central concept in the ego's thought system. This thought gives the body autonomy, separates it from the mind, and keeps the idea of attack inviolate. If the body could be sick, Atonement would be impossible. A body that can order a mind to do as it sees fit would merely take the place of God and prove salvation is impossible. What then is left to heal? The body has become lord of the mind. How could the mind be returned to the Holy Spirit unless the body is killed? And who would want salvation at such a price?

 

4 Certainly sickness does not appear to be a decision. Nor would anyone actually believe he wants to be sick. Perhaps he can accept the idea in theory, but it is rarely if ever consistently applied to all specific forms of sickness, both in the individual's perception of himself and of all others as well. Nor is it at this level that the teacher of God calls forth the miracle of healing. He overlooks the mind and body, seeing only the face of Christ shining in front of him, correcting all mistakes and healing all perception. Healing is the result of the recognition by God's teacher of Who it is that is in need of healing. This recognition has no special reference. It is true of all things that God created. In it are all illusions healed.

 

5 When a teacher of God fails to heal, it is because he has forgotten Who he is. Another's sickness thus becomes his own. In allowing this to happen, he has identified with another's ego and has thus confused him with a body. In so doing, he has refused to accept the Atonement for himself and can hardly offer it to his brother in Christ's Name. He will, in fact, be unable to recognize his brother at all, for his Father did not create bodies, and so he is seeing in his brother only the unreal. Mistakes do not correct mistakes, and distorted perception does not heal. Step back now, teacher of God. You have been wrong. Lead not the way, for you have lost it. Turn quickly to your Teacher, and let yourself be healed.

 

6 The offer of Atonement is universal. It is equally applicable to all individuals in all circumstances. And in it is the power to heal all individuals of all forms of sickness. Not to believe this is to be unfair to God and thus unfaithful to Him. A sick person perceives himself as separate from God. Would you see him as separate from you? It is your task to heal the sense of separation that has made him sick. It is your function to recognize for him that what he believes about himself is not the truth. It is your forgiveness that must show him this. Healing is very simple. Atonement is received and offered. Having been received, it must be accepted. It is in the receiving, then, that healing lies. All else must follow from this single purpose.

 

7 Who can limit the power of God Himself? Who then can say who can be healed of what and what must remain beyond God's power to forgive? This is insanity indeed. It is not up to God's teachers to set limits upon Him because it is not up to them to judge His Son. And to judge His Son is to limit his Father. Both are equally meaningless. Yet this will not be understood until God's teacher recognizes that they are the same mistake. Herein does he receive Atonement, for he withdraws his judgment from the Son of God, accepting him as God created him. No longer does he stand apart from God, determining where healing should be given and where it should be withheld. Now can he say with God, "This is my beloved Son, created perfect and forever so."

 

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