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A COURSE IN MIRACLES
CH 9 "THE CORRECTION OF ERROR"
V. THE AWARENESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
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.
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A COURSE IN MIRACLES
DAILY LESSONS
L e s s o n 102
I share God's Will for happiness for me.
*
IAMBIC PENTAMETER BEGINS*
<
AUDIO>
<VIDEO>
Voice and Music by CIMS SonShip Radio
You do not want to suffer. You may think
it buys you something, and may still believe
a little that it buys you what you want.
Yet this belief is surely shaken now,
at least enough to let you question it,
and to suspect it really makes no sense.
It has not gone as yet, but lacks the roots
that once secured it tightly to the dark
and hidden secret places of your mind.|
Today we try to loose its weakened hold
still further, and to realize that pain
is purposeless, without a cause, and with
no power to accomplish anything.
It cannot purchase anything at all.
It offers nothing, and does not exist.
And everything you think it offers you
is lacking in existence, like itself.
You have been slave to nothing. Be you free
today to join the happy Will of God.|
For several days we will continue to
devote our longer practice periods
to exercises planned to help you reach
the happiness God's Will has placed in you.
Here is your home, and here your safety is.
Here is your peace, and here there is no fear.
Here is salvation. Here is rest at last.|
Begin your practice periods today
with this acceptance of God's Will for you:
"I share God's Will for happiness for me,
And I accept it as my function now."
Then seek this function deep within your mind,
for it is there, awaiting but your choice.
You cannot fail to find it when you learn
it is your choice, and that you share God's Will.|
Be happy, for your only function here
is happiness. You have no need to be
less loving to God's Son than He Whose Love
created him as loving as Himself.
Besides these hourly five minute rests,
pause frequently today to tell yourself
that you have now accepted happiness
as your one function. And be sure that you
are joining with God's Will in doing this.
~ Original Handscript of ACIM
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ACIM Edmonton - Sarah's Reflections
LESSON 102
I share God's Will for happiness for me.
Sarah's Commentary:
This Lesson is a continuation of the previous one. Here our elder brother Jesus continues to address the whole idea of suffering. According to him, we think suffering can buy us something we want. "You may think it buys you something, and may still believe a little that it buys you what you want." (W.102.1.2) Now that sounds totally insane, yet, when you think about it, you can see this is true. I remember as a young child all the attention I got when I was sick and the benefits I received from not having to be responsible for anything. There was a huge payoff for me. Of course, I was not conscious that this was my motivation. At a conscious level, I was unhappy with the suffering I endured, yet the payoff of being the victim was there.
You may protest that you don't want the pain and suffering you are experiencing, but he asks us to bring some awareness to the inherent benefits. He asks us to look at what our suffering allows us to do and not to do. The fact is that we do want to suffer because we want the payoff. The payoff is to be the victim. In addition, we get things like attention, control, and the ability to manipulate others to meet our needs. To us, suffering seems like a small price to pay for what we can get from it. Through suffering, we demonstrate that others are responsible for our condition. We make them the guilty ones who will ultimately suffer God's punishment. Now they can pay for our guilt of separating from God, and we can escape from what we fear from Him.
Suffering proves that we are right, and we are justified in our attacks because, "look at what they have done to us." It proves our reality is indeed these fragile bodies and personalities. It proves that God is wrong about who He says we are. Finally, it is a way we punish ourselves for our seeming sin. Now God need not punish us, as we have "atoned" for our sin against Him. "Salvation thus cannot be purchased but through suffering." (W.101.2.2) Who would have thought suffering is such a prize to the ego? The ego tells us this is how we purchase salvation. Otherwise, we are doomed!
It is important to remember that this is our dream. We made it up, so we can agree to change it whenever we take to heart what Jesus is saying in this Lesson. "You do not want to suffer." (W.102.1.1) Apparently, we still do, but he is appealing to the decision-making part of the mind that can agree to see that there is another choice we can make. We can give the Holy Spirit the sin and guilt in our minds that we think offers us something. When we project it onto others, we believe we can make them responsible for our suffering; but this is how we keep the cycle of guilt and fear going.
We believe grief will bring us a reward. We believe deprivation has some kind of elevated goal, but Jesus says we are now far enough along in our understanding the belief that suffering will buy us something we want has been weakened. "Yet this belief is surely shaken now, at least enough to let you question it, and to suspect it really makes no sense." (W.102.1.3) Our beliefs are no longer as firmly established in our thinking as they once were.
While we are still not free of our guilt and suffering, Jesus assures us "It has not gone yet, but lacks the roots that once secured it tightly to the dark and hidden secret places of your mind." (W.102.1.4) What this means is Jesus is confident about our ability to change our minds because we have already gone a long way in doing so. Of course, the ego does not want us to look at these dark and hidden secret places because completely releasing these places in the mind means the end of the ego. While it is indeed the end of the ego, we fear it means the end of us. Jesus assures us that he is with us, walking with us through this fear to the extent we are willing to let him in.
Today, we try to ". . . realize that pain is purposeless, without a cause and with no power to accomplish anything." (W.102.2.1) The purpose of pain is to keep us focused on the body and personality and rooted in the illusion. It keeps us separate from our brothers, feeling all alone with our pain and suffering and separate from God. But pain and suffering offer us nothing of value. "It cannot purchase anything at all." (W.102.2.2) It will not purchase our salvation as the ego promises. It accomplishes nothing except to bring more suffering. The idea we should suffer comes from guilt. The original guilt came about as a result of the belief we had separated from God, attacked Him, attacked and destroyed the perfection of our being, and now deserve punishment. Obviously, this is deeply hidden in our subconscious but shows up in our lives when we experience pain, depression, grief, rage, sickness, and suffering of any kind.
Thus, the happiness God has willed for us, which is our natural inheritance, is obscured. This happiness is not something we need to look for. It is already in us. We are not trying to make ourselves happy. We just need to give up the sadness and suffering, so we can connect to the happiness within. It is to "Step gently aside, and let healing be done for you." (T.16.I.3.7) (ACIM OE T.16.I.3) Our part is to take responsibility for our feelings by bringing awareness to our unhealed thoughts and turning them over to the Holy Spirit, so healing can take place. It requires letting down our defenses to see what is hidden from our awareness.
Today, we try to realize any pain or distress we feel we have chosen, not because we want pain, but because of what we think it will get us. It appears to pay off our guilt. Jesus tells us, "And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for, and receive as I have asked." (T.21.II.2.5) (ACIM OE T.21.III.15) There are no accidents. We are responsible for our experience. Jesus reminds us that there is only God and nothing outside of Him exists. There cannot be God and something else as well if God is all there is. If we choose "something else," we make a choice to be on our own. By this choice, we reject God's Love.
Nothing in this world happens to me outside my will, and my will determines my perception of everything and my response to everything. It is my decision on how I see everything that seems to be happening but also to recognize that nothing real is happening to me at all. In other words, the temporal happenings of this world don't really exist and neither do these separate selves. Unless we include the second point along with the first, we will feel entirely at the mercy of our own mind, and we will wonder, "How in the world did I manifest this?" Then, we feel totally responsible and even victimized by our own minds. However, when we accept that the non-eternal does not even exist, we can step aside from our investment in the dream. This is perhaps one of the hardest things to take in and accept, but God and the ego are irreconcilable beliefs. It is one or the other---truth or illusion. As was said in Lesson 98, "We take a stand on but one side today." (W.98.1.2)
God already knows us as the perfect Self we are, but we need to experience God as a beneficent and loving Father and not the punishing God that the mind fears. Our final obstacle to peace is the fear of God, but God doesn't understand the belief in sin that we hold in our minds. He asks nothing of us. If He did, it would acknowledge that there is something He needs of us, which is not the case.
When we recognize God's Will for us is perfect happiness and nothing else, we know that the only place where our safety lies is in our home in Him. "Here is your home, and here your safety is. Here is your peace, and here there is no fear. Here is salvation. Here is rest at last." (W.102.3.2-5) It is there right now, waiting for our acceptance and acknowledgment. Our part is to simply look at our guilt, which is then dispelled when we look at it without judgment or self-condemnation. We simply look and no longer protect the guilt with our defenses, and thus it can no longer thrive in the secret, dark places in the mind.
"Be happy. Your
only function here is happiness." (W.102.5.1) When we give, rather than try to get, we serve our function and experience a deep level of the happiness that is already in us. We then share the joy that emanates from within. When we are unhappy, we use it as our excuse for not being loving. Have you noticed the many excuses we give for being hurtful? It can be anything from, "I have a headache," to "I am tired," to "I don't feel well." From these places where we suffer, we don't extend to others. Our function is now to look honestly at our suffering and what is behind it so the pain we experience can be corrected. Jesus asks us to remind ourselves in our practice today, "I share God's Will for happiness for me, and I accept it as my function now." (W.102.4.2)
If you are not feeling this way today, just be willing to look at the blocks to love that you are experiencing and choose again, and then just let healing be. You are responsible only for the correction, not the error. You are dearly loved and nothing you are experiencing can change that fact.
Love and blessings, Sarah
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Chapter Nine
The Correction of Error
<TEXT AUDIO>
Voice and Music by Martin Weber, CIMS SonShip Radio
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.
~ Original Hand Script of ACIM
ON LINE SEARCHABLE Original Edition
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