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A COURSE IN MIRACLES
CH 20 "THE PROMISE OF THE RESURRECTION"
IX. THE VISION OF SINLESSNESS
69 Your brother's sinlessness is given you in shining light, to look on with the Holy Spirit's vision and to rejoice in along with Him. For peace will come to all who ask for it with real desire and sincerity of purpose, shared with the Holy Spirit and at one with Him on what salvation is. Be willing, then, to see your brother sinless that Christ may rise before your vision and give you joy. And place no value on your brother's body, which holds him to illusions of what he is. It is his desire to see his sinlessness, as it is yours. And bless the Son of God in your relationship, nor see in him what you have made of him.
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A COURSE IN MIRACLES
WORKBOOK for STUDENTS
WHAT IS FORGIVENESS
Voice and Music by CIMS SonShip Radio
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
L e s s o n 229
Love, Which created me,
is what I am.
Voice and Music by CIMS SonShip Radio
I seek my own identity, and find
it in these words: "Love, Which created me,
is what I am." Now need I seek no more.
Love has prevailed. So still it waited for
my coming home, that I will turn away
no longer from the holy face of Christ.
And what I look upon attests the truth
of the identity I sought to lose,
but which my Father has kept safe for me.
Father, my thanks to You for what I am;
for keeping my identity untouched
and sinless in the midst of all the thoughts
of sin my foolish mind made up. And thanks
to You for saving me from them. Amen
~ Original Handscript of ACIM
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ACIM Edmonton - Sarah's Reflections
LESSON 229
Love, which* created me, is what I am.
Sarah's Commentary:
This Lesson is about the importance of accepting our reality, which is not a body or personality that we think of as ourselves. "I am not a body. I am free for I am still as Love created me." (W.RVI.3.3-5) When the mind is healed, we experience Oneness with the Father and with all our brothers and sisters. There is no separation.
What does forgiveness have to do with all of this? It is about releasing all of the judgments we hold about ourselves and all of our self-concepts, beliefs, and grievances, which are made-up by "my foolish mind." (W.229.2.1) Nothing we think about ourselves and the world is true, including the body, which is not our reality and not what we are. The body is a projection of the mind. It is a projection of the unconscious guilt we hold in the mind that keeps us from awareness of our reality.
To heal, we must bring all judgments, opinions, ideas, beliefs, and concepts to the truth. It is about bringing the darkness to the light, not about bringing spirituality to the illusion. To do so is to overlay spiritual concepts onto what we currently hold in the mind. It is another defense against the truth, adding another block to the awareness of love's presence. Thus, spiritualizing the illusion is not helpful. Spiritualizing the illusion is when we try to bring God into our lives in the mistaken belief that we can make our lives better and happier here.
The goal of the Course is to awaken from this dream, not to make the prison house prettier so we can have a better dream. When the blocks to love are released, space is made for the peace and joy already in our minds to come through. This means we need to look at our thoughts with courage, honesty, and clarity and bring them to the inner altar where Holiness abides in us. Here they are dissolved. Our job is to be vigilant in watching our thoughts and taking responsibility for our projections. We must look at our grievances with total honesty and non-judgment, recognizing they are just foolish thoughts. Then, we wait patiently in trust and confidence for the Holy Spirit to do the rest. The Holy Spirit responds immediately at our request. There may seem to be a delay, yet all we are waiting for is our own readiness to receive His answer and be released. Even when we say we are ready, if we are completely honest, we will see that there is still resistance to letting our perspectives go.
For example, I have, in the past, been insecure in my relationships, which created feelings of possessiveness and jealousy. I thought the way to address my problem was to find ways to control my partner in the mistaken belief that if he did what I wanted him to do. or stopped doing what was making me jealous, I could be happy. I was ready to ask for real healing only when I was willing to take total responsibility and accept that it was my own mind that was the cause of my feelings of insecurity and had nothing to do with my partner. My own self-attacking thoughts were being projected onto him. I needed to come to a willingness to release my fearful thoughts and take responsibility for what I was feeling as coming from my own mind.
Healing happens when we are ready to look at our projections that are based on what is going on in our own minds, rather than trying to change things in form. The jealousy persisted even after I thought I had brought it forth to be forgiven. Clearly, it was an indication that there were lingering fears still in the mind that I was not yet ready to release. Then one day, I noticed that the same intensity of feelings about abandonment and unworthiness were considerably lessened. What had happened? Initially, it seemed that I had given them over to the Holy Spirit, but I was unaware that I was consistently taking my fears back. I had not completely surrendered them to Him. Each time I noticed the thoughts were there once again in my mind, I reminded myself that they were being handled by Him and I could trust that it was not up to me to do anything about them. One day I noticed the feelings of jealousy and possessiveness could not be found. The beautiful thing about this process was that it was not my doing. The ego will never undo itself. Our part is always to bring awareness to our issues, take responsibility for them, inquire into the root cause, and place the issue on the inner altar, and the Holy Spirit does the rest. It is what makes forgiveness easy, as our part is not difficult when we do not insist that we have the answers.
The reason it seems to take time is that, even though we say we are willing to let certain fears and issues go, we still stubbornly hold onto them; or we turn them over only to take them back. For example, we might give over a fear thought, but later notice that our minds are ruminating on that same thought again. This is the temptation of the ego to keep the fear thought and thereby justify its own existence. When we ruminate on thoughts that we think we have released, we are still invested in them. We like our own thoughts, which define us as special and separate from others. Who would I be without these thoughts? Our mind-watching must be vigilant if we are to catch the ego at its game. When our determination for healing is strong, all situations and events in our lives contribute perfectly. When this is the case, nothing in our day is wrong. Everything is perfectly orchestrated. We do not see anything as a problem, but only as an opportunity to heal another layer of the mind.
This Course does not simply tell us that the world is a dream, but it takes us to the root of that belief, and slowly, as we are ready, we learn to undo the hallucination until we recognize truth. Affirmations assist us in this process because they affirm the truth, but they will never be enough. We can never drown out the incessant voice of the ego with the truth. We must do the work of undoing the ego with willingness and determination. We must question everything we currently hold as true.
Forgiveness is at the core of the work of healing our minds. Releasing our judgments helps us to realize that there is nothing we need to do in order to know the truth about ourselves. There is nothing to seek. We are it. We are Love. That is the truth about us, even though it is obscured by illusory thoughts and beliefs. "You may be surprised to hear how very different is reality from what you see. You do not realize the magnitude of that one error. It was so vast and so completely incredible that from it a world of total unreality had to emerge. What else could come of it? Its fragmented aspects are fearful enough, as you begin to look at them. But nothing you have seen begins to show you the enormity of the original error, which seems to cast you out of Heaven, to shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and to force you to make further substitutions. " (T.18.I.5.1-6) (ACIM OE T.18.II.5) It all came from the projection of the thoughts in the mind. I have taught myself this madness and I suffer for it, but I am urged not to be afraid of what I have made, for it is "not sin but madness." (T.18.I.6.7) (ACIM OE T.18.II.6) "Inward is sanity; insanity is outside you." (T.18.I.7.4) (ACIM OE T.18.II.7)
"Love is not learned. Its meaning lies within itself. And learning ends when you have recognized all it is not."
(T.18.IX.12.1-3) (ACIM OE T.18.XI.96)
We will remember ourselves as the love we are and know the truth about ourselves when everything we made up that is upside down and backward is given over for healing or, in other words, when it is brought to the light. We do not need to fix ourselves. We just need to release all of the beliefs and concepts that are not true. Many of these beliefs are reinforced by the world. An example of this is from a manuscript written by Karen Bentley, a Course teacher who wrote that Rush Limbaugh, a talk show host, apparently spoke of four popular beliefs about addiction, which are:
1. We need help to solve our problems with addictions
2. We are powerless victims of the disease
3. We can never really heal and are stuck in the limbo of recovery forever
4. To stop yourself from addictions is a monumentally difficult task
Jesus helps us to see these ideas are taught to us by an ego mind that is false, limiting, dis-empowering, and self-attacking. We are not weak, helpless, sick or victimized by anything. Yet it is easy to embrace such statements and believe in them when everyone around us holds them near and dear; just because millions or even billions hold this as true does not make it so. As we accept these kinds of popularized thoughts into our minds, we are limiting ourselves and blocking our happiness. It is apparent that we cannot look to the world to change our perceptions. We need to look to our own minds and bring these and other false thoughts to the truth. Any addiction can be healed. Willpower is not what is required. In fact, willpower has very little power on its own because it is not of God. Only willingness to bring our unhealed thoughts to the light of truth has true power to heal. These are thoughts that have been kept locked away in the conditioned mind.
Jesus asks us to examine, "Have you not wondered what the world is really like; how it would look through happy eyes? The world you see is but a judgment on yourself. It is not there at all. Yet judgment lays a sentence on it, justifies it and makes it real. Such is the world you see; a judgment on yourself, and made by you. This sickly picture of yourself is carefully preserved by the ego, whose image it is and which it loves, and placed outside you in the world. And to this world must you adjust as long as you believe the picture is outside, and has you at its mercy. This world is merciless, and were it outside of you, you should indeed be fearful. Yet it was you who made it merciless, and now if mercilessness seems to look back at you, it can be corrected." (T.20.III.5.1-9) (ACIM OE T.20.IV.20)
This is saying that it is within our control to change what we perceive because the world is just a projection of the thought system of sin, guilt, and fear held in the mind. In other words, the world reflects what we are thinking. I do not have control over the world I made, but I do have control over my mind. By trying to change things in the world or by trying to change or control others in order to make me happy, I will always be fighting a losing battle; but, as I heal my mind, I will look on the world through the eyes of love. It does not necessarily mean the behavior of others will change, though it may. But if not, my perception of their behavior certainly will.
I have been a master of manipulation and control in my relationships. It was all based on fear and a deep sense of unworthiness. I did not feel the love within and therefore tried to extract it from others. It was all based on neediness and a sense of lack. It was not easy to take back my projections and take responsibility for them, but as I did so more and more, I recognized the love in me was always there. When my husband left me many years ago, I learned that love was not about trying to keep the form. Yes, it was difficult, and feelings of rejection, abandonment, and unworthiness came up, but I felt assurance from Jesus that I was not left comfortless. I learned that when the goal for the relationship is changed from specialness to holiness, initially there is significant conflict, so I accepted this was part of the process of healing. As such, I held in my mind the firm belief that I would come through it with his help. This is the value of the Course because Jesus lays out the path very clearly for us and helps us to see what we can expect as we go through this process. When everything seems to be falling apart, we do not need to run from the Course, but instead, to recognize that we are on the way through the darkness to the light. The process is indeed difficult at times, but the end result is more and more peace and joy in our lives.
"Love wishes to be known, completely understood and shared. It has no secrets; nothing that it would keep apart and hide. It walks in sunlight, open-eyed and calm, in smiling welcome and in sincerity so simple and so obvious it cannot be misunderstood."
(T.20.VI.2.5-7) (ACIM OE T.20.VII.46)
If you are distressed today, know there is a program, running in your mind of thoughts, beliefs, and self-concepts, to be uncovered for your healing. The Holy Spirit will not bring these thoughts to the light because we are the ones that made them, and now it is our job to bring them to the truth. No one but myself is responsible for my lack of peace. If I do not have peace, it is because I have thrown it away, believing that someone or something has the power to take it from me. I can withdraw that power when I realize that everything that is happening is what I have called into my day. When I take responsibility for my lack of peace and willingly turn over my beliefs, what I perceive as problems become opportunities for healing.
As we become more and more confident in the power of this process, we welcome challenges, as they assist us to look more deeply into the ego thought system. "The darkest of your hidden cornerstones holds your belief in guilt from your awareness." (T.13.II.3.1) (ACIM OE T.13.II.3) Increasingly, we move toward these dark cornerstones with more and more confidence. We come to know and trust the power of the Holy Spirit working in our lives because we have tested it and found it to be true. When the mind and emotions shift, there is also a shift in the seeming world, and thus we experience more and more peace and joy.
The caution is that as chronic problems in our lives are brought up for healing, there may be a sense that things are getting worse, but this is only because these problems have layers. As we uncover each layer, we go deeper into the mind, a place the ego has kept out of our awareness. This is where all of our unhappiness, conflict, and fears originate. The deeper we go into the mind, the more we uncover and, sometimes, the worse we feel; but this need not be. From outside of the dream, we can see the unreality of it all and approach this mind-watching activity with positive anticipation, knowing the outcome is ultimately more peace and joy.
The ego says, "Don't go there." Yet when it seems dangerous to the ego mind, it is celebrated by Spirit. Under the darkness is the love. What the ego is really afraid of is love. The ego is happy to see us stay in our suffering and continue to believe our own thoughts. The real fear held by the ego is that when we go through the dark clouds, we will discover the truth about ourselves---that the clouds are not real. The sun has always been shining on us, simply obscured by the clouds which are our own thoughts. We are pure Love. Our fear is of losing control and submitting to the love, which we keep out of our awareness in order to preserve our beliefs and self-concepts about who we think we are.
We are eternally powerful beings who can never die. "Love, which created me, is what I am." (W.229) I dedicate these words today to the memory of my ex-husband Dr. Ken Ward, who left his body on this date, but, like all of us, was created in love and continues in the truth of his eternal being that cannot die. May this awareness grow in each of us. It is what time is for.
Love and blessings, Sarah
Printable Document
*Course in Miracles Society [CIMS] publishers of A Course in Miracles - Original Edition uses the original handscript: "Love, Which created me, is what I am."
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Chapter Twenty
The Promise of the Resurrection
Voice and Music by Martin Weber, CIMS SonShip Radio
IX. The Vision of Sinlessness
67 Vision will come to you at first in glimpses, but they will be enough to show you what is given you who see your brother sinless. Truth is restored to you through your desire, as it was lost to you through your desire for something else. Open the holy place which you closed off by valuing the "something else," and what was never lost will quietly return. It has been saved for you. Vision would not be necessary had judgment not been made. Desire now its whole undoing, and it is done for you.
68 Do you not want to know your own Identity? Would you not happily exchange your doubts for certainty? Would you not willingly be free of misery and learn again of joy? Your holy relationship offers all this to you. As it was given you, so will be its effects. And as its holy purpose was not made by you, the means by which its happy end is yours is also not of you. Rejoice in what is yours but for the asking and think not that you need make either means or end. All this is given you who would but see your brother sinless. All this is given, waiting on your desire but to receive it. Vision is freely given to those who ask to see.
69 Your brother's sinlessness is given you in shining light, to look on with the Holy Spirit's vision and to rejoice in along with Him. For peace will come to all who ask for it with real desire and sincerity of purpose, shared with the Holy Spirit and at one with Him on what salvation is. Be willing, then, to see your brother sinless that Christ may rise before your vision and give you joy. And place no value on your brother's body, which holds him to illusions of what he is. It is his desire to see his sinlessness, as it is yours. And bless the Son of God in your relationship, nor see in him what you have made of him.
70 The Holy Spirit guarantees that what God willed and gave you shall be yours. This is your purpose now, and the vision that makes it yours is ready to be given. You have the vision which enables each one to see the body not. And as you look upon each other, you will see an altar to your Father, holy as Heaven, glowing with radiant purity and sparkling with the shining lilies you laid upon it. What can you value more than this? Why do you think the body is a better home, a safer shelter for God's Son? Why would you rather look on it than on the truth? How can the engine of destruction be preferred and chosen to replace the holy home the Holy Spirit offers, where He will dwell with you?
71 The body is the sign of weakness, vulnerability, and loss of power. Can such a savior help you? Would you turn in your distress and need for help unto the helpless? Is the pitifully little the perfect choice to call upon for strength? Judgment will seem to make your savior weak. Yet it is
you who need his strength. There is no problem, no event or situation, no perplexity that vision will not solve. All is redeemed when looked upon with vision. For this is not
your sight, and brings with it the laws beloved of Him Whose sight it
is.
72 Everything looked upon with vision falls gently into place according to the laws brought to it by His calm and certain sight. The end for everything He looks upon is always sure. For it will meet His purpose, seen in unadjusted form and suited perfectly to meet it. Destructiveness becomes benign, and sin is turned to blessing under His gentle gaze. What can the body's eyes perceive, with power to correct? Its eyes
adjust to sin, unable to overlook it in any form and seeing it everywhere, in everything. Look through its eyes, and everything will stand condemned before you. All that could save you, you will never see. Your holy relationship, the source of your salvation, will be deprived of meaning, and its most holy purpose bereft of means for its accomplishment.
73 Judgment is but a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play the idle game of death in your imagination. But vision sets all things right, bringing them gently within the kindly sway of Heaven's laws. What if you recognized this world is an hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see if you
accepted this? And would you
see it?
74 Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are. This is the healing and the remedy. Believe them not, and they are gone. And all you need to do is recognize
you did this. Once you accept this simple fact and take unto yourself the power you gave them, you are released from them. One thing is sure-hallucinations serve a purpose, and when that purpose is no longer held, they disappear. Therefore, the question never is whether you want them, but always, do you want the purpose which they serve? This world seems to hold out many purposes, each different and with different values. Yet they are all the same. Again there is no order but a seeming hierarchy of values.
75 Only two purposes are possible. And one is sin, the other holiness. Nothing is in between, and which you choose determines what you see. For what you see is merely how you elect to meet your goal. Hallucinations serve to meet the goal of madness. They are the means by which the outside world, projected from within, adjusts to sin and seems to witness to its reality. It still is true that nothing is without. Yet upon nothing are all projections made. For it is the projection which gives the "nothing" all the meaning that it holds.
76 What has no meaning cannot be perceived. And meaning always looks within to find itself and
then looks out. All meaning that you give the world outside must thus reflect the sight you saw within; or better, if you saw at all or merely judged against. Vision is the means by which the Holy Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild hallucinations that show you all the fearful outcomes of imagined sin into the calm and reassuring sights with which He would replace them. These gentle sights and sounds are looked on happily and heard with joy. They are His substitutes for all the terrifying sights and screaming sounds the ego's purpose brought to your horrified awareness. They step away from sin, reminding you that it is not reality which frightens you and that the errors which you made can be corrected.
77 When you have looked on what seemed terrifying and seen it change to sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of violence and death and watched them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear, life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away, who need persuade you to accept the gift of vision? And after vision, who is there who could refuse what must come after? Think but an instant just on this-you can behold the holiness God gave His Son. And never need you think that there is something else for you to see.
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