Graphic by ©Deposit Photos
A COURSE IN MIRACLES
CH 5 "HEALING AND WHOLENESS"
IX.THE ETERNAL FIXATION
85 Fixation is the pull of God, on whom your mind
is fixed because of the Holy Spirit's irrevocable set. "Irrevocable" means "cannot be called back or redirected." The irrevocable nature of the Holy Spirit's set is the basis for His unequivocal Voice. The Holy Spirit
never changes His mind. Clarity of thought
cannot occur under conditions of vacillation. Unless a mind is fixed in its purpose, it is
not clear. Clarity literally means the state of light, and enlightenment
is understanding. Enlightenment stands
under perception because you have denied it as the
real foundation of thought. This is the basis for
all delusional systems.
|
A COURSE IN MIRACLES
WORKBOOK PART I ~ REVIEW I
INTRODUCTION
Voice and Music by CIMS SonShip Radio
1 Beginning with today, we will have a series of review periods. Each of them will cover five of the ideas already presented, starting with the first and ending with the fiftieth. There will be a few short comments after each of the ideas which you should consider in your review. In the practice periods, the exercises should be done as follows:
2 Begin the day by reading the five ideas, with the comments included. Thereafter, it is not necessary to follow any particular order in considering them, though each one should be practiced at least once. Devote two minutes or more to each practice period, thinking about the idea and the related comments. Do this as often as possible during the day. If any one of the five ideas appeals to you more than the others, concentrate on that one. At the end of the day, however, be sure to review all of them once more.
3 It is not necessary to cover the comments that follow each idea literally or thoroughly in the practice periods. Rather, try merely to emphasize the central point and think about it as part of your review of the idea to which it relates.
4 The review exercises should be done with your eyes closed and when you are alone in a quiet place if possible. This is emphasized particularly for reviews at your stage of learning. It will be necessary, however, that you learn to require no special settings in which to apply what you have learned. You will need it most in situations which appear to be upsetting, rather than in those which already seem to be calm and quiet.
5 The purpose of your learning is to enable you to bring the quiet with you and to heal distress and turmoil. This is not done by avoiding them and seeking a haven of isolation for yourself. You will yet learn that peace is part of you and requires only that you be there to embrace any situation in which you are. And finally you will learn that there is no limit to where you are, so that your peace is everywhere, as you are.
6 You will note that for review purposes the ideas are not always given in quite their original form of statement. Use them as they are given here. It is not necessary to return to the original statements nor to apply the ideas as was suggested then. We are now emphasizing the relationships among the first fifty of the ideas we have covered and the cohesiveness of the thought system to which they are leading you.
~ Original Hand Script of ACIM
Click this Heart and then click heart
on SoundCloud page
to LIKE Us
|
A COURSE IN MIRACLES
DAILY LESSONS
L e s s o n 59 ~ Review I
[Review Lesson 41-45]
<
AUDIO
><VIDEO>
Voice and Music by CIMS SonShip Radio
1The following ideas are for review today:
[41] God goes with me wherever I go.
2How can I be alone when God always goes with me? How can I be doubtful and unsure of myself when perfect certainty abides in Him? How can I be disturbed by anything when He rests in me in absolute peace? How can I suffer when love and joy surround me through Him? Let me not cherish illusions about myself. I am perfect because God goes with me wherever I go.
[42] God is my strength. Vision is His gift.
3Let me not look to my own eyes to see today. Let me be willing to exchange my pitiful illusion of seeing for the vision that is given by God. Christ's vision is His gift, and He has given it to me. Let me call upon this gift today, so that this day may help me to understand eternity.
[43] God is my Source. I cannot see apart from Him.
4I can see what God wants me to see. I cannot see anything else. Beyond His Will lie only illusions. It is these I choose when I think I can see apart from Him. It is these I choose when I try to see through the body's eyes. Yet the vision of Christ has been given me to replace them. It is through this vision that I choose to see.
[44] God is the Light in which I see.
5I cannot see in darkness. God is the only Light. Therefore if I am to see, it must be through Him. I have tried to define what seeing is, and I have been wrong. Now it is given me to understand that God is the Light in which I see. Let me welcome vision and the happy world it will show me.
[45] God is the Mind with which I think.
6I have no thoughts I do not share with God. I have no thoughts apart from Him because I have no mind apart from His. As part of His Mind, my thoughts are His and His Thoughts are mine.
~ Original Hand Script of ACIM
|
|
ACIM Edmonton - Sarah's Reflections
LESSON 59 ~ REVIEW I
[Review Lessons 41-45]
Sarah's Commentary:
These Review Lessons are all about not relying on our own strength but remembering Who goes with us, what the Source of our real strength is, and what reason we would ever have to be disturbed by anything when God is with us always. How could we feel lonely if we really got this? How can we suffer when we are surrounded by love and joy always? How can we be doubtful and unsure of ourselves when we have perfect certainty abiding in us?
We feel disturbed by things going on in our lives, and we feel lonely and suffer. If Jesus is right about suffering being an impossibility, why would we feel lonely and sad? Jesus gives us the answer, saying if we don't feel God's presence, His strength, and His support, we are cherishing illusions about ourselves instead. We are actually choosing against our own peace and happiness. If indeed we can choose happiness instead of suffering anytime we want it, why would we stubbornly resist this choice? It is because we want to be right about the way we see things based on our beliefs and conclusions we make. Is it possible we would rather be right than happy? And what is it we want to be right about? Mostly it is about who we are and what we believe. But in the end, who of us does not want peace and happiness?
When we feel attacked, we want to retaliate; yet when we do, we throw our peace away. When we try to hold others accountable for what they do to us, we keep ourselves in prison with them. The ego urges us not to retaliate, but when we do, it tells us we should feel guilty for what we have done. This is the ego's game and as long as we engage in it, we are trapped in its game. When we stubbornly resist giving up our perceptions and letting the Holy Spirit write on the blank slate of our minds, we are choosing against our happiness. When our minds are filled with our own cherished thoughts, we make no room for another interpretation of the situation.
The questions put to us in this review are meant to get us thinking about how it is indeed possible to be unhappy, distressed, worried, and lonely when "love and joy surround me through Him." (W.59.1.5) With love and joy surrounding us all the time, why would we ever be afraid and uncertain? We are never separate and alone because the Love of God is in our minds. We are assured by Jesus that we are continually making a choice, whether to draw on His Love, which is in us, or continue to rely on our own mistaken interpretations of everyone and everything. We are not asked to believe something some higher authority insists is the truth. We are in the process of checking it out for ourselves.
When we bring our mistaken perceptions to the truth, we experience the peace and joy that come through forgiveness. We are being encouraged to continue to apply each Lesson on a daily basis to whatever comes up in our day that disturbs us so we can let go of the disturbance. This Course is about application. Without applying the Lessons to our day, the words will be taken as intellectual concepts that will not help us. Daily, we are asked to look at our mistaken thoughts with the light of the Holy Spirit, so they can be dismissed. This means we look at our thoughts with His Love beside us, so we don't judge ourselves for the hate we see in our minds.
When we are willing to ask for help to give up our cherished illusions about ourselves and look honestly at our judgments, we have started the process of healing. By not looking, our illusions are safely kept in obscurity. Thus, they are out of reach of healing. What are these cherished illusions? They are our perspectives, our concepts, our values, our opinions, our beliefs, and our perceptions. "Let me not cherish illusions about myself." (W.59.1.6) Help me to surrender, to give up, and to release all I think on my own. My own thoughts are of no value to me since they are thoughts about nothing. They keep me invested in the illusion. They keep me in a state of suffering and lack. The truth is that we have everything. Wait a minute. If we believe this, can we truly also feel alone and miserable and depressed? Jesus reminds us we can "exchange my [our] pitiful illusion of seeing for the vision that is given by God." (W.59.2.4) Why would we hold onto our cherished illusions if this were the case?
"His attraction for you remains unlimited, but because your power, being His, is as great as His, you can turn away from love."
(T.15.IX.6.3) (ACIM OE T.15.IX.90) Yes, it is our decision to turn away from love. It is an amazing thing to really appreciate the power of our minds to reject all these gifts. Our minds are as powerful as God's because they are a part of His Mind!
What that means is that nothing will convince me to choose love until I find the illusion intolerable. In the interview that Mel Gibson gave about his reason for doing the movie, The Passion of Christ, he confessed he had everything in the world---all the money, power, recognition, wife, children, everything the world had to offer---yet he was on the verge of suicide. Jim Carey said he hopes we get everything we want in the material world so we can see that our happiness is not there. The material world can all feel very meaningless. Behind all these worldly attractions, there is a strong pull in us for the real attraction. As we read in Lesson 231, "What can I seek for, Father, but Your Love? Perhaps I think I seek for something else; a something I have called by many names. Yet is Your Love the only thing I seek, or ever sought. For there is nothing else that I could ever really want to find." (W.231.1.1-4)
As we apply these teachings to our lives, we increasingly see that our happiness cannot be found in the world. It is then that our attachments to the things of the world start to fall away on their own. We are not asked to sacrifice anything to which we are attached. Eventually, we come to see that what we are giving up has no value. We increasingly recognize we have a bigger, more irresistible attraction to something much more meaningful. We increasingly recognize that the real Source of our strength, our happiness, and our peace is within.
"I have no thoughts I do not share with God. I have no thoughts apart from Him, because I have no mind apart from His."
(W.59.5.2-3) The world arose from the idea that we could have thoughts separate from God. Now we see that as we hold these thoughts, we maintain our misery and sufficient motivation to want the healing that comes through forgiveness. Thankfully, we have a way out of the hell we have made. We can choose peace with every decision we make. Time was made for the purpose of healing. That is all time is for. Yes, we will make a lot of mistakes, but they are not sins. They are simply opportunities to choose again. Choice is our one remaining freedom in this world. What we are choosing in each moment is truth or illusion, Heaven or hell, attack or forgiveness, the ego or the Holy Spirit. Our grievances and mistakes just provide opportunities to choose again and again until there is no choice to be made when our minds are unified with the truth.
We can't come to this in a pure environment. We need the challenges and issues that come forth daily. They are our invitations to look at the ego and release the obstacles to the love we are. What are these obstacles? Only our own thoughts! They are not real thoughts. They are thoughts in our minds, which we think are private. Yet our right mind is totally shared with the Mind of God. His Thoughts are not limited and do not limit who we really are. Only the thoughts of the ego do that, and they are not true. We do not have to choose to listen to them as they are nothing but thoughts.
God keeps no thoughts to Himself. His thoughts are in our right minds where the truth dwells. Our thoughts are given reality because we believe in them, but they originated with the separation. Thus, they are thoughts about nothing and have no meaning.
He truly is our strength, and vision is His gift to us. (W.59.2.1-2) He truly is our Source, and we cannot see apart from Him. (W.59.3.1-2) He truly is the light in which we see. (W.59.4.1) We ask that we may let this be the day in which we might experience the truth of what we are. We do that by setting the intention for the kind of day we want. (T.30.I.)
We can't see eternity with our physical eyes. With our eyes, we only see form. God has given us the gift of real seeing, of vision. Everything our eyes see will be gone at some point. When people have reported experiences of leaving the body and looking at it from above, obviously they see without their eyeballs, which are still in the body. In the same way, the brain does not think. When people report near death experiences, their brain is in the body they have left, but they still have perception of the experience and report it in great detail. It is clear the bodily senses are not the mind that thinks or the eyes that see. All we have is the illusion of seeing. We might enjoy seeing beautiful scenery and lovely sunsets, but in the end, it is just shape and color and has no eternal value. "God is the light in which I see." (W.59.4.1) In this recognition, I am free.
Love and blessings, Sarah
|
Chapter Five: Healing and Wholeness
<TEXT AUDIO>
Voice and Music by Martin Weber, CIMS SonShip Radio
83 The idea of "set" is among the better psychological concepts. Actually, it is used quite frequently in the Bible and also in this course under many different terms. For example, "God will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed (or set) on Him," a statement which means that God's peace is set in the Holy Spirit because it is fixed on God. It is also fixed in you. You, then,
are fixed in the peace of God. The concept of "fixation" is also a very helpful one which Freud understood perfectly. Unfortunately, he lost his understanding because he was afraid and, as you know all too well, fear is incompatible with good judgment. Fear distorts thinking and therefore
disorders thought.
84 Freud's system of thought was extremely ingenious because Freud was extremely ingenious, and a mind
must endow its thoughts with its own attributes. This is its inherent strength, although it may misuse its power. Freud lost much of the potential value of his thought system because he did
not include himself in it. This is a dissociated state because the thinker cuts himself off from his thoughts. Freud's thought was so conflicted that he could not have retained his sanity as
he saw it
without dissociation. That is why the many contradictions which are quite apparent in his thinking became increasingly less apparent to
him. A man who knows what fixation really means and yet does not yield to it is terribly afraid.
85 Fixation is the pull of God, on whom your mind
is fixed because of the Holy Spirit's irrevocable set. "Irrevocable" means "cannot be called back or redirected." The irrevocable nature of the Holy Spirit's set is the basis for His unequivocal Voice. The Holy Spirit
never changes His mind. Clarity of thought
cannot occur under conditions of vacillation. Unless a mind is fixed in its purpose, it is
not clear. Clarity literally means the state of light, and enlightenment
is understanding. Enlightenment stands
under perception because you have denied it as the
real foundation of thought. This is the basis for
all delusional systems.
86 The concept of fixation as Freud saw it has a number of learning advantages. First, it recognizes that man can be fixated at a point in development which does
not accord with a point in time. This clearly could have been a means toward real release from the time belief, had Freud pursued it with an open mind. Freud, however, suffered all his life from refusal to allow eternity to dawn upon his mind and enlighten it truly. As a result, he overlooked
now entirely and merely saw the continuity of past and future.
87 Second, although Freud misinterpreted what the Holy Spirit told him, or better, reminded him of, he was too honest to deny more than was necessary to keep his fear in tolerable bounds as he perceived the situation. Therefore, he emphasized that the point in development at which the mind is fixated is more real to
itself than the external reality with which it disagrees. This again could have been a powerful
release mechanism had Freud not decided to involve it in a strong
defense system because he perceived it as an attack.
88 Third, although Freud interpreted fixation as involving irrevocable "danger points" to which the mind could always regress, the concept can also be interpreted as an irrevocable call to sanity which the mind cannot
lose. Freud himself could not accept this interpretation, but throughout his thought system, the "threat" of fixation remained and could never be eliminated by any living human being. Essentially, this was the basis of Freud's pessimism, personally as well as theoretically. He tried every means his very inventive mind could devise to set up a form of therapy which could enable the mind to escape from fixation forever, even though he
knew this was impossible.
89 This knowledge plagued Freud's belief in his own thought system at every turn because he was both an honest man and a healer. He was therefore only partially insane and was unable to relinquish the
hope of release even though he could not cope with it. The reason for this amount of detail is because
you are in the same position. You were eternally fixated on God in your creation, and the pull of this fixation is so strong that you will never overcome it. The reason is perfectly clear. The fixation is on a level so high that it cannot
be surmounted. You are
always being pulled back to your Creator because you
belong to Him.
90 Do you
really believe you can make a voice that can drown out His? Do you
really believe that you can devise a thought system which can separate you from His? Do you
really believe that you can plan for your safety and joy better than He can? You need be neither careful nor careless; you need merely cast your cares upon Him because He careth for
you. You
are His care because He loves you. His Voice reminds you always that all hope is yours
because of His care. You
cannot choose to escape His care because that is not His Will, but you
can choose to accept His care and use the infinite power
of His care for all those He created
by it.
91 There have been many healers who did not heal themselves. They have not moved mountains by their faith because their faith was not whole. Some of them have healed the sick at times, but they have not raised the dead. Unless the healer heals
himself, he does
not believe that there is no order of difficulty in miracles. He has not learned that
every mind God created is equally worthy of being healed
because God created it whole. You are merely asked to return to God the mind as
He created it. He asks you only for what He gave, knowing that this giving will heal you. Sanity
is wholeness, and the sanity of your brothers
is yours.
92 Why should you listen to the endless insane calls which you think are made upon you when you
know the Voice of God Himself is in you? God commended His Spirit to you and asks that you commend yours to Him. He wills to keep it in perfect peace because you are of one mind and spirit with Him. Excluding yourself from the Atonement is the ego's last-ditch defense of its
own existence. It reflects both the ego's need to separate and your willingness to side with its separateness. This willingness means
that you do not want to be healed.
93 But the time
is now. You have not been asked to work out the plan of salvation yourselves because, as I told you before, the remedy is
not of your making. God Himself gave you the perfect correction for everything you have made which is
not in accord with His holy Will. I have made His plan perfectly explicit to you and have also told you of your part in His plan and how urgent it is that you fulfill it. There is time for delay, but there need not be. God weeps at the "sacrifice" of His Children, who believe they are lost to Him.
94 I have already told you that whenever you are not wholly joyous it is because you have reacted with a lack of love to some Soul which God created. Perceiving this as "sin," you become defensive because you
expect attack. The decision to react in this way, however, is
yours and can therefore be undone. It
cannot be undone by repentance in the usual sense because this implies guilt. If you allow yourself to feel guilty, you will
reinforce the error rather than allow it to be undone
for you.
95 Decisions
cannot be difficult. This is obvious if you realize that you must
already have made a decision
not to be wholly joyous if that is how you feel. Therefore, the first step in the undoing is to recognize that you
actively decided wrongly but can
as actively decide otherwise. Be very firm with yourselves in this, and keep yourselves fully aware of the fact that the undoing process, which does
not come from you, is nevertheless
within you because God placed it there.
Your part is merely to return your thinking to the point at which the error was made and give it over to the Atonement in peace. Say to yourselves the following as sincerely as you can, remembering that the Holy Spirit will respond fully to your slightest invitation:
96 I must have decided wrongly because I am
notat peace.
I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.
I
will to decide otherwise because I
want to be at peace.
I do
not feel guilty because the Holy Spirit will undo
all the consequences of my wrong decision
if I will let Him.
I
will to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for Me.
ON LINE SEARCHABLE Original Edition
Hope you will click Heart to LIKE Us
Click this Heart and then click heart on SoundCloud page
to LIKE Us
|
|
To UNSUBSCRIBE, Open email sent to you and scroll to bottom. Click where it says:
[Message clipped]
View entire message
Scroll to the bottom and click the "UnSubscribe Button"
|
|
|
