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A COURSE IN MIRACLES
CH 9 "THE CORRECTION OF ERROR"
V. THE AWARENESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
33 If your brothers
are part of you, will you
accept them? Only they can teach you what you are, and your learning is the result of what you taught them. What you call upon in them, you call upon in
yourself. And as you call upon it in them, it becomes real to
you.
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DAILY LESSON
L e s s o n 104
I seek but what belongs to me in truth.
Voice and Music by CIMS SonShip Radio
Today's idea continues with the thought
that joy and peace are not but idle dreams.
They are your right, because of what you are.
They come to you from God, Who cannot fail
to give you what He wills. Yet must there be
a place made ready to receive His gifts.
They are not welcomed gladly by a mind
which has instead received the gifts it made
where His belong, as substitutes for them.
Today we would remove all meaningless
and self-made gifts which we have placed upon
the holy altar where God's gifts belong.
His are the gifts which are our own in truth.
His are the gifts which we inherited
before time was, and which will still be ours
when time has passed into eternity.
His are the gifts which are within us now,
for they are timeless. And we need not wait
to have them. They belong to us today.
Therefore we will to have them now, and know
in choosing them in place of what we made
we but unite our will with what God wills,
and recognize the same as being One.
Our longer practice periods today,
the hourly five minutes given truth
for your salvation, should begin with this:
I seek but what belongs to me in truth.
And joy and peace are my inheritance.
Then lay aside the conflicts of the world
which offer other gifts and other goals
made of illusions, witnessed to by them,
and sought for only in a world of dreams.
All this we lay aside, and seek instead
that which is truly ours, as we ask
to recognize what God has given us.
We clear a holy place within our minds
before His altar, where His gifts of peace
and joy are welcome, and to which we come
to find what has been given us by Him.
We come in confidence today, aware
that what belongs to us in truth is what
He gives. And we would wish for nothing else,
for nothing else belongs to us in truth.
So do we clear the way for Him today
by simply recognizing that His Will
is done already, and that joy and peace
belong to us as His eternal gifts.
We will not let ourselves lose sight of them
between the times we come to seek for them
where He has laid them. This reminder will
we bring to mind as often as we can:
I seek but what belongs to me in truth.
God's gifts of joy and peace are all I want.
~ Original Hand Script of ACIM
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ACIM Edmonton - Sarah's Reflections
LESSON 104
I seek but what belongs to me in truth.
Sarah's Commentary:
Isn't it interesting how we spend our lives seeking for happiness, wanting to be free of conflict, wanting peace, joy, and love, not knowing we already have within us everything we seek? Why is peace, love and joy not a consistent experience in our lives? The answer is we are constantly choosing against what is in our best interests. We continue to side with the ego, which tells us our lot in life is to suffer because we sinned against God and thus we don't welcome the love and peace.
"They are not welcomed gladly by a mind that has instead received the gifts it made where His belong, as substitutes for them.
" (W.104.1.5) We make plans and goals, believing they will bring us the happiness we seek, but, instead, all they offer is more guilt, which reinforces our belief we are separate from God. The ego urges us to keep seeking for substitutes for God, but these substitutes will never satisfy us. They are
"all meaningless and self-made gifts" (W.104.2.1) we have put in the place where God's gifts await our acceptance. The only thing that will fill the emptiness we try to fill with idols in the world is the experience of the love we are.
Imagine having everything you believe is important in your life. You have all the money, all the power, all the recognition, all the stuff you are seeking. Yet if you lack real contentment, real peace and joy that wells up from deep within, then what do you really have? The things of this world we strive for we think will bring us fulfillment at some future time. With our focus on our perceived needs, as we define them, we resist God's gifts. In fact, we are afraid of them. But everyone eventually comes to the recognition the things we have made to substitute for His gifts do not deliver on their promise. Does this mean we must give up our cherished goals? No, as long as we still value them, to give them up is to sacrifice what we think we want. My experience is as I withdraw the value I have placed on them they just drop away. This has come with the recognition I really do not know my best interests and therefore I have no idea where my happiness lies.
This Lesson reminds us as long as we clutter up the holy place within our minds with our own "gifts," there will be no room there for us to discover the gifts given to us by God. "Yet must there be a place made ready to receive His gifts." (W.104.1.4) We must "clear a holy place within our minds before His altar, where His gifts of peace and joy are welcome, and to which we come to find what has been given us by Him." (W.104.4.2)
How do we do it? He instructs us to: 1) Lay aside the conflicts of the world, (W.104.3.4) all those things that clutter the altar of our mind, which include our secret sins, our guilt, shame, fear, sadness, desires, specialness and unworthiness. 2) Choose to have His gifts "in place of what we made." (W.104.3.1) 3) Recognize our will is the same as God's. We truly want the same thing as He wants for us. We must "unite our will with what God wills, and recognize the same as being one." (W.104.3.1) And finally 4) Affirm joy and peace are our inheritance, given to us "before time was." (W.104.2.3)
We have always had these gifts. Jesus said, "before Abraham was I am." Like the words of the song: "I am as I am, as sent me." We have always been. Nothing we can ever do can change the truth of who we are "as sent me." We are not actually sent anywhere, only we can't change who we are. This is what the Atonement principle says, which is we can't change the truth about the Self we are, although we can stay unaware of this truth as long as we choose. When we are ready, and only then, will we open our hearts and minds to this truth. We need to give it welcome. It will never be thrust on us. We need to loosen our commitment to our way and recognize there truly is a better way. What is needed is willingness, and willingness comes only when we see our way does not work and we finally admit we have been wrong about who we are and where our happiness lies.
If these gifts of love, true freedom, and eternal life are with us now, what Jesus is telling us is we don't have to wait for them, which is contrary to what the ego tells us. It says God's love is in the future and we must suffer here and atone for our sins to receive the gifts of Heaven in the hereafter. Thus, we believe we have to pay the price first by cleaning up our act. Clearly this is not what Jesus is teaching us in the Course. What is here now is our fear keeping us from God's Love. We can choose to have His gifts now in the place of what we have made, but as long as we think we need our pain, our anger, our depression and our own way, and that it will buy us something of value in the future, we are actively choosing against these gifts. Our investment in fear, suffering and specialness is what we must look at with great honesty.
Jesus says nothing else belongs to us except peace and joy. Our other seeming possessions are nothing. When we realize our natural inheritance, we will "wish for nothing else." (W.104.4.4) What else could we want? Why would we want to suffer? There is no need to seek the gifts of joy and peace as we already have them! We don't consistently experience them, because what we have made in this dream has taken the place of these gifts. Yet we can reclaim them anytime we choose, by clearing the way for them through forgiveness. Once we do, peace and joy extend through us.
We have all probably experienced at some time in our lives being in a room with someone who radiates joy and peace. I remember my first and only visit with Chief Dan George many years ago. I had read about him prior to meeting him and he was a hero to me. I was very excited about meeting him and very nervous. Yet as he held both my hands as I knelt in front of the chair where he was sitting, and he looked into my eyes, I dissolved in tears. It was a beautiful joining where there was no need to fill the space with words. He just radiated such peace and certainty about who he was. Since then I have had other experiences like this, but this one I will forever treasure because it seemed like such a turning point early in my life.
This kind of joining can be so deeply intimate and powerful it can bring up a level of fear. We fear this kind of intimacy because we are invested in defending against it. We work to maintain our boundaries. We want to maintain our separation where the ego tells us we will be safe. Recognizing the discomfort and fear demonstrate to us how much we fear love. We believe our safety lies in separation. We are uncomfortable in the face of such a deep level of intimacy. Yet each time we join in peace and love, we experience His presence, which offers such a beautiful healing gift. Each time we are in the presence of the Christ, we are reminded what we are, One Self united with our Creator, all the same, with no separate interests. "I seek but what belongs to me in truth." (W.104.3.3) When we let down the seemingly protective guard, we feel exposed, yet in this we see into each other in a deep and intimate way.
With all of the focus on understanding the Lessons, which is important of course, we sometimes lose the intent of practice and application throughout the day. Practice is essential, if the Lesson is to take hold in our experience. And there is no question, if we are doing the practice as per the Lesson instructions, it takes tremendous vigilance. The extent to which we invest in practice, gives us some sense of the extent of our dedication and commitment to the truth at this time in our lives. It also shows us our resistance/fear. We are urged not to fight the ego, not to fight ourselves. It is just another opportunity to look at our fear and bring it to the light of truth. Do not judge or condemn yourself when you find resistance strong. Just notice it and ask for help to find your way to more willingness. We are asked not to fight ourselves, as this will not release resistance, but, in fact, only strengthen it. This is why Jesus demonstrates such patience with us and we must be patient with ourselves.
Recognize today nothing need change in your world. It is all perfect for your awakening when used as an opportunity to accept and to forgive. All you need to do is choose to release your interpretations of outside events and ask Him to decide for you how to see everything and everyone. Everything is perfect for our awakening when we choose to use our day as a classroom for this purpose. Everything is for our best and highest interests. Today, when I am tempted not to be joyful, not to be peaceful, to blame others or myself for anything, or think I know what would make me happy, I remember these things have actually only brought me misery. I choose to give up the ego's counsel as to where my happiness lies. Instead, I remember the only way back to my Self is to continually seek out the Teacher within whose light will shine away my false beliefs and concepts. My part is to bring these false perceptions to the light of His truth, so He can clear a space in my mind for His gifts. If I am tempted to be upset by anything today, I am willing to see it is my resistance to remembering the truth of who I am. I will not judge the resistance and will accept it is a natural response to the progress I am making in my healing. I accept it as a positive sign.
Love and blessings, Sarah
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V. The Awareness of the Holy Spirit
31 How can you become increasingly aware of the Holy Spirit in you
except by His effects? You cannot see Him with your eyes nor hear Him with your ears. How, then, can you perceive Him at all? If you inspire joy, and others react to you
with joy even though you are not experiencing joy yourself, there
must be something in you that is capable of producing it. If it is in you and
can produce joy, and if you see that it
does produce joy in others, you
must be dissociating it in yourself.
32 It seems to you that the Holy Spirit does
not produce joy consistently in you
only because you do not consistently
arouse joy in others. Their reactions to you
are your evaluations of His consistency. When you are inconsistent, you will not always
give rise to joy and so you will not always
recognize His consistency. What you offer to your brother, you offer to Him because He cannot go
beyond your offering in His giving. This is not because
He limits His giving, but simply because you have limited your
receiving. The will to receive is the will to accept.
33 If your brothers
are part of you, will you
accept them? Only they can teach you what you are, and your learning is the result of what you taught them. What you call upon in them, you call upon in
yourself. And as you call upon it in them, it becomes real to
you. God has but one Son, knowing them all
as one. Only God Himself is more than they, but they are not less than He is. Would you know what this means? If what you do to my brother you do to me, and if you do everything for yourself because we are
part of you, everything
we do belongs to you as well. Every Soul God created
is part of you and shares His glory
with you. His Glory belongs to Him, but it is equally
yours. You cannot, then, be
less glorious than He is.
34 God is more than you only because He
created you, but not even this would He keep from you. Therefore you
can create as He did, and your dissociation will
not alter this. Neither God's light
nor yours is dimmed because you do not see. Because the Sonship
must create as one, you remember creation whenever you recognize
part of creation. Each part you remember adds to
your wholeness because each part
is whole. Wholeness is indivisible, but you cannot learn of your wholeness until you see it
everywhere. You can
know yourself only as God knows His Son, for knowledge is shared
with God. When you awake in Him you will know your magnitude by accepting His limitlessness as
yours, but meanwhile you will judge it as you judge your brothers' and will accept it as you accept
theirs.
35 You are not yet awake, but you can learn
how to awaken. Very simply the Holy Spirit teaches you to awaken others. As you see them waken, you will learn what waking
means, and because you have willed to wake them, their gratitude and their appreciation of what you have given them will teach
you its value.
They will become the witnesses to your reality, as
you were created witnesses to God's. Yet when the Sonship comes together and
accepts its oneness, it will be known by its creations, who witness to its reality as the Son does to the Father.
36 Miracles have no place in eternity because they are reparative. Yet while you still need healing, your miracles are the only witnesses to your reality which you can
recognize. You cannot perform a miracle for
yourself because miracles are a way of
giving acceptance
and receiving it. In time, the giving comes first, though they are simultaneous in eternity, where they cannot be separated. When you have learned that they
are the same, the need for time is over.
37 Eternity is
one time, its only dimension being "always." This cannot mean anything to you, however, until you remember God's open arms and finally know His open Mind. Like Him,
you are "always"-in His mind and with a mind like His. In
your open mind are
your creations, in perfect communication born of perfect understanding. Could you but accept one of them, you would not want
anything the world has to offer. Everything else would be totally meaningless. God's meaning is incomplete without you, and you are incomplete without your creations. Accept your brother in this world and accept
nothing else, for in him you will find your creations because he created them
with you. You will never know that you are co-creator with God until you learn that your brother is a co-creator with
you.
ON LINE SEARCHABLE Original Edition
PDF 2016 Schedule of Lessons & Text Readings
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