Lesson 225
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He will make straight the Way
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A COURSE IN MIRACLES
 
CH 20 "THE PROMISE OF THE RESURRECTION" 
V. ENTERING THE ARK

36 He will go before you making straight your path and leaving in your way no stones to trip on and no obstacles to bar your way. Nothing you need will be denied you. Not one seeming difficulty but will melt away before you reach it. You need take thought for nothing, careless of everything except the only purpose that you would fulfill. As that was given you, so will its fulfillment be. God's guarantee will hold against all obstacles, for it rests on certainty and not contingency. It rests on you. And what can be more certain than a Son of God?

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WORKBOOK for STUDENTS
WHAT IS FORGIVENESS
What is Forgiveness
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*IAMBIC PENTAMETER

   
   Forgiveness recognizes what you thought
   your brother did to you has not occurred.
   It does not pardon sins, and make them real.
   It sees there was no sin. And in this view
   are all your sins forgiven. What is sin
   except a false idea of God's Son?
   Forgiveness merely sees its falsity,
   and therefore lets it go. What then is free
   to take its place is now the Will of God.
 
   An unforgiving thought is one which makes
   a judgment that it will not raise to doubt,
   although it is untrue. The mind is closed,
   and will not be released. The thought protects
   projection, tightening its chains, so that
   distortions are more veiled and more obscure;
   less easily accessible to doubt,
   and further kept from reason. What can come
   between a fixed projection and the aim
   that it has chosen as its needed goal?
 
   An unforgiving thought does many things.
   In frantic action it pursues its goal,
   twisting and overturning what it sees
   as interfering with its chosen path.
   Distortion is its purpose, and the means
   by which it would accomplish it as well.
   It sets about its furious attempts
   to smash reality without concern
   for anything that would appear to pose
   a contradiction to its point of view.
 
   Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still
   and quietly does nothing. It offends
   no aspect of reality, nor seeks
   to twist it to appearance that it likes.
   It merely looks and waits and judges not.
   He who would not forgive must judge, for he
   must justify his failure to forgive.
   But he who would forgive himself must learn
   to welcome truth exactly as it is.
 
   Do nothing, then, and let forgiveness show
   you what to do through Him Who is your Guide,
   your Saviour and Defender, strong in hope
   and certain of your ultimate success.
   He has forgiven you already, for
   such is His function, given Him by God.
   Now must you share His function, and forgive
   whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees,
   and whom He honors as the Son of God. "

      ~ Original Handscript of ACIM September 21, 1970


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A COURSE IN MIRACLES
DAILY LESSON
SonShip Workbook
L e s s o n 225
God is my Father
and His Son loves Him.


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Father, I must return Your Love for me,
for giving and receiving are the same,
and You have given all Your Love to me.
I must return It, for I want It mine
in full awareness, blazing in my mind,
and keeping it within Its kindly light,
inviolate, beloved, with fear behind
and only peace ahead. How still the way
God's loving Son is led along to Him!


Brother, we find that stillness now. The way
is open. Now we follow it in peace
together. You have reached your hand to me,
and I will never leave you. We are one,
and it is but this oneness that we seek
as we accomplish these few final steps
which end a journey that was not begun.  

~ Original Handscript of ACIM

 
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ACIM Edmonton - Sarah's Reflections 
ACIM Edmonton, CA
LESSON 225
God is my Father, and His Son loves Him.

  
Sarah's Commentary:  

How do we demonstrate our love for our Father? How do we return it to Him? This Lesson says, "I must return it, for I want it mine in full awareness..." (W.225.1.2) In other words, if I want to experience the love I am, and if I want it to be in full awareness, I must extend love to my brother; for to give and to receive are one. We are basically giving to ourselves. "Father, I must return Your Love for me, for giving and receiving are the same, and You have given all Your Love to me." (W.225.1.1) The love my Father has given me must now be extended so can I know it is in me to give.
 
If I want to know my Self, I must take responsibility for the self-attacking beliefs that I am holding in my mind and bring them to awareness. When I judge and hold grievances and hide behind my defenses, I cannot be aware of my true identity as love. Our nature is love, as given us by God, but we cannot know it when we put more value on the things we have substituted for love. In other words, the things of this world that we value more, such as the opinions and judgments we hold and the need to be right, keep us from the awareness of what we are. When we turn over the blocks to love, that we are holding in our minds, to the Holy Spirit, we release what stands in the way of love, and thus we experience the miracle.
 
Look again at the discussion on "What is forgiveness?" (W.PII.Q1) Here, Jesus speaks to us of our projections. "The [unforgiving] thought protects projection, tightening its chains, so that distortions are more veiled and more obscure; less easily accessible to doubt, and further kept from reason. What can come between a fixed projection and the aim that it has chosen as its wanted goal?" (W.PII.Q1.2.3-4) What we project onto others keeps us unaware of the unhealed aspects of our own minds. As I blame and judge others, I am protecting myself from recognizing the guilt in my mind. Instead, I see it in you. Now my mind is imprisoned by chains of unforgiving thoughts. If my goal is to see you as guilty and to see my sin in you, my fixed position will not be changed. When I justify my anger and stay with my story about you, I make my case as to why the guilt belongs to you. Now, no healing is possible. The ego mind, which is the wrong mind, holds all of these unforgiving thoughts that block love. As long as we refuse to release these thoughts to the Holy Spirit for healing, we will not know the gifts forgiveness offers us.
 
The purpose of holding onto our unforgiving thoughts is to maintain the separation and our investment in the ego and the world. "It sets about its furious attempts to smash reality, without concern for anything that would appear to pose a contradiction to its point of view." (W.PII.Q1.3.4) When we become willing to release our judgments by taking responsibility for our projections and simply looking at them with the light of truth, space is made in the mind for love to come streaming in. Our belief in sin and guilt is what holds the seeming reality of the body and the world in place. With it comes an investment in the past and future and expectations of how things should be in the world to make us happy. When we choose to release our unforgiving thoughts to the Holy Spirit, we can find the quiet center in us and "learn to welcome truth exactly as it is." (W.PII.Q1.4.5)
 
Jesus tells us that we don't know how to forgive and must be taught. "Do nothing, then, and let forgiveness show you what to do, through Him Who is your Guide, your Savior and Protector, strong in hope, and certain of your ultimate success." (W.PII.Q1.5.1) Of our own, we can do nothing. The ego will never undo itself. The Holy Spirit is the light in us, as a symbol of the love we are. His light shines away all that is brought to Him in the sincere desire for healing. As we let His light guide us in the busy doings wherever we are sent, the content of the love is expressed through us. Purification is always necessary first. This has nothing to do with the body. It is the mind that must be purified. The one thought that must be healed is the thought of guilt, which is an impediment to the miracle. If love is in our hearts and our minds, then everything we do becomes an extension of that love. Purification can only come by asking for help from the Holy Spirit to release our belief in separation.
 
What do we know of peace? We try to find it in our own way. We try to figure out how to be peaceful. We think peace comes from things going well in the world. We think that if our needs are met, we will finally know peace; yet what we are doing is looking for peace in form. We look forward to summer holidays where we think we will find the peace that eludes us in our daily lives. We look forward to relaxing and taking time from the daily grind. We think we will be peaceful if we successfully address the things in the world that we think are important to accomplish. But the peace we are seeking is already in us. There is nothing to seek because we have it already. All we are asked to do is be still, come in silence, listen, go within and open to hearing His Voice. We come in certainty today, leaving "fear behind and only peace ahead." (W.225.1.2)
 
Only through forgiveness can we experience deep rest and relaxation. Judgment is what tires us, according to Jesus. Our rest comes in giving up judgment. Thus, the best way to use our time, if we truly want peace and happiness, is to watch the mind for interfering thoughts. No worldly pursuit will ever satisfy us or bring us the joy and peace forgiveness offers. It is about releasing our belief in guilt. Our belief in guilt, our feeling of "I am bad," feeling unworthy, and being in a state of lack are the only sources of suffering. Think about it. It is a startling realization when we learn that everything comes from our own minds, rather than from the events of our lives. We think that our suffering comes from what someone has done or hasn't done or from some external circumstance. Certainly, we don't think that our own guilt, and all the self-attack that goes with it, is the source of all our suffering. The source of all suffering is internal. It comes from the beliefs and self-concepts we hold, all of which can be undone through forgiveness.
 
Yes, we do make mistakes that need correction, but with guilt, we believe we deserve punishment. Forgiveness offers us an opportunity to take responsibility for our mistaken perceptions and bring them for correction. It is our way out of this cycle of sin, guilt, and fear. Any judgments that we will not raise to doubt protect the projections we place on others. "The mind is closed, and will not be released." (W.PII.Q1.2.2) We prefer to see our guilt in others and want it punished in them. We hope God is watching so He will know how much others have mistreated us, and thus they will deserve the punishment we secretly believe we deserve. Yet when we blame others, the belief in sin is reinforced in our own minds, rather than corrected, which brings more guilt and more need to blame, find fault, and judge. Whether we blame others or ourselves, it is the same. Blame keeps us in the cycle of sin, guilt, and fear.
 
We are invited today to reach out for the hand of Jesus, and when we do, he promises that he will never leave us because we are one with him. Let us lean on this support today, as we release our thoughts of conflict that swirl in the mind and keep us from knowing our true Self as love and peace. How we demonstrate our love for God is by coming to know our Self as the Son who loves Him. In other words, we come to the recognition of the truth of what we are through forgiveness. We can only do that as we take total responsibility for all of our thoughts, watch our minds, and release the self-condemnation and concepts that we hold about ourselves. When we no longer hold guilt in the mind, we accept our innocence and see it in everyone.
 
"I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself." (T.31.V.17.7) (ACIM OE T.31.V.60) Let go of the "I know" mind. We don't know our Self because we have become lost in the dream.
 
We are now given prayers that invite us to enter into the silence and the stillness in which the truth can be known. Jesus enters that stillness with us. He is the open doorway. "Now we follow it in peace together." (W.225.2.3) He assures us that he will never leave us. He cannot because he is one with us. He is the symbol of truth in our right minds. We are the ones who have closed the door to the awareness of his constant presence, and we are the ones who can now make another choice. He awaits our decision. Our happiness depends on it.
 
Love and blessings, Sarah 
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A Course in Miracles
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Chapter Twenty

The Promise of the Resurrection 
 
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V. Entering the Ark   

28 Nothing can hurt you unless you give it the power to do so. For you give power as the laws of this world interpret giving---as you give you lose. It is not up to you to give power at all. Power is of God, given by Him and reawakened by the Holy Spirit, Who knows that as you give you gain. He gives no power to sin, and therefore it has none; nor to its results as this world sees them---sickness and death and misery and pain. These things have not occurred because the Holy Spirit sees them not and gives no power to their seeming source. Thus would He keep you free of them. Being without illusion of what you are, the Holy Spirit merely gives everything to God, Who has already given and received all that is true. The untrue He has neither received nor given.
 
29 Sin has no place in Heaven, where its results are alien and can no more enter than can their source. And therein lies your need to see your brother sinless. In him is Heaven. See sin in him instead, and Heaven is lost to you. But see him as he is, and what is yours shines from him to you. Your savior gives you only love, but what you would receive of him is up to you. It lies in him to overlook all your mistakes, and therein lies his own salvation. And so it is with yours. [Salvation is a lesson in giving, as the Holy Spirit interprets it.] It is the reawakening of the laws of God in minds that have established other laws and given them power to enforce what God created not.
 
30 Your insane laws were made to guarantee that you would make mistakes and give them power over you by accepting their results as your just due. What could this be but madness? And is it this that you would see within your savior from insanity? He is as free from this as you are, and in the freedom that you see in him, you see your own. For this you share. What God has given follows His laws and His alone. Nor is it possible for those who follow them to suffer the results of any other source.
 
31 Those who choose freedom will experience only its results. Their power is of God, and they will give it only to what God has given to share with them. Nothing but this can touch them, for they see only this, sharing their power according to the Will of God. And thus their freedom is established and maintained. It is upheld through all temptation to imprison and to be imprisoned. It is of them who learned of freedom that you should ask what freedom is. Ask not the sparrow how the eagle soars, for those with little wings have not accepted for themselves the power to share with you.
 
32 The sinless give as they received. See, then, the power of sinlessness within your brother and share with him the power of the release from sin you offered him. To each who walks this earth in seeming solitude is a savior given, whose special function here is to release him and so to free himself. In the world of separation, each is appointed separately, though they are all the same. Yet those who know that they are all the same need not salvation. And each one finds his savior when he is ready to look upon the face of Christ and see Him sinless.
 
33 The plan is not of you, nor need you be concerned with anything except the part that has been given you to learn. For He Who knows the rest will see to it without your help. But think not that He does not need your part to help Him with the rest. For in your part lies all of it, without which is no part complete, nor is the whole completed without your part. The ark of peace is entered two by two, yet the beginning of another world goes with them. Each holy relationship must enter here to learn its special function in the Holy Spirit's plan, now that it shares His purpose. And as this purpose is fulfilled, a new world rises in which sin can enter not, and where the Son of God can enter without fear, and where he rests a while to forget imprisonment and to remember freedom. How can he enter, to rest and to remember, without you? Except you be there, he is not complete. And it is his completion that he remembers there.
 
34 This is the purpose given you. Think not that your forgiveness of each other serves but you two alone. For the whole new world rests in the hands of every two who enter here to rest. And as they rest, the face of Christ shines on them, and they remember the laws of God, forgetting all the rest and yearning only to have His laws perfectly fulfilled in them and all their brothers. Think you when this has been achieved that you will rest without them? You could no more leave one of them outside than I could leave you and forget part of myself.
 
35 You may wonder how you can be at peace when, while you are in time, there is so much that must be done before the way to peace is open. Perhaps this seems impossible to you. But ask yourself if it is possible that God would have a plan for your salvation that does not work. Once you accept His plan as the one function that you would fulfill, there will be nothing else the Holy Spirit will not arrange for you without your effort.
 
36 He will go before you making straight your path and leaving in your way no stones to trip on and no obstacles to bar your way. Nothing you need will be denied you. Not one seeming difficulty but will melt away before you reach it. You need take thought for nothing, careless of everything except the only purpose that you would fulfill. As that was given you, so will its fulfillment be. God's guarantee will hold against all obstacles, for it rests on certainty and not contingency. It rests on you. And what can be more certain than a Son of God?

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