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A COURSE IN MIRACLES
CH 11 "GOD'S PLAN FOR SALVATION"
VI. THE SANE CURRICULUM
52 Your learning potential, properly understood, is limitless because it will lead you to God. You can teach the way to Him and learn it if you follow the Teacher Who knows it and His curriculum for learning it. The curriculum is totally unambiguous because the goal is not divided, and the means and the end are in complete accord. You need offer only undivided attention. Everything else will be given you. For it is your will to learn aright, and nothing can oppose the will of God's Son. His learning is as unlimited as he is.
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A COURSE IN MIRACLES
DAILY LESSONS
L e s s o n 125 In quiet I receive God's Word Today.
*
IAMBIC PENTAMETER BEGINS*
<
AUDIO>
<VIDEO>
Voice and Music by CIMS SonShip Radio
Let this day be a day of stillness and
of quiet listening. Your Father wills
you hear His Word today. He calls to you
from deep within your mind, where He abides.
Hear Him today. No peace is possible
until His Word is heard around the world;
until your mind, in quiet listening,
accepts the message which the world must hear
to usher in the quiet time of peace.|
This world will change through you. No other means can save it, for God's plan is simply this: The Son of God is free to save himself, given the Word of God to be his Guide, forever in his mind and at his side to lead him surely to his Father's house by his own will, forever free as His. He is not led by force, but only love. He is not judged, but only sanctified.|
In stillness we will hear His Voice today, without intrusion of our petty thoughts, without our personal desires, and without all judgment of His holy Word. We will not judge ourselves today, for what we are cannot be judged. We stand apart from all the judgments which the world has laid upon the Son of God. It knows him not. Today we will not listen to the world, but wait in silence for the Word of God.|
Hear, holy Son of God, your Father speak. His Voice would give to you His holy Word to spread across the world the tidings of salvation and the holy time of peace. We gather at the throne of God today, the quiet place within your mind where He abides forever in the holiness which He created and will never leave.|
He has not waited until you return your mind to Him to give His Word to you. He has not hid Himself from you while you have wandered off a little while from Him. He does not cherish the illusions which you hold about yourself. He knows His Son, and wills that he remain as part of Him regardless of his dreams; regardless of his madness that his will is not his own.|
Today He speaks to you. His Voice awaits your silence, for His Word cannot be heard unless your mind is quiet for a while, and meaningless desires have been stilled. Await His Word in quiet. There is peace within you to be called upon today to help make ready your most holy mind to hear the Voice of its Creator speak.|
Three times today, at times most suitable for silence, give ten minutes set apart from listening to the world, and choose instead a gentle listening to the Word of God. He speaks from nearer than your heart to you. His Voice is closer than your hand. His Love is everything you are and what He is; the same as you, and you the same as He.|
It is your voice to which you listen as He speaks to you. It is your Word He speaks. It is the Word of freedom and of peace, of unity of will and purpose, with no separation nor division in the single Mind of Father and of Son. In quiet listen to your Self today, and let Him tell you God has never left His Son, and you have never left your Self.|
Only be quiet. You will need no rule but this to make your practicing today lift you above the thinking of the world, and free your vision from the body's eyes. Only be still and listen. You will hear the Word in which the Will of God the Son joins in His Father's Will, at one with It, with no illusions interposed between the wholly indivisible and true.
As every hour passes by today
be still a moment, and remind yourself you have a special purpose for this day; in quiet to receive the Word of God.
~ Original Handscript of ACIM
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ACIM Edmonton - Sarah's Reflections
LESSON 125
In quiet I receive God's Word today.
Sarah's Commentary:
God's word is in us because the truth is our inheritance as the Son of God. It is the Atonement Principle, the guarantee given by God that we have never separated from Him, nor have we changed ourselves because this is something we can't accomplish. His light is in our minds. Our true Self is always there in the mind silently awaiting our acknowledgment. "The memory of God comes to the quiet mind." (T.23.I.1.1) (ACIM OE T.23.II.7) There is nowhere to go and nothing to do. We are there now in our true state, but we are not aware that this is so until we willingly agree to let go of what stands in the way. In this place of silence and peace, we connect to our one Self.
Our petty thoughts, our judgments, our plans, our constant inner chatter, and our personal desires, all keep us from awareness of the love we are. Notice the incessant thoughts of the wrong mind, which are often described in the Course as senseless shrieks, frantic, riotous thoughts, raucous screams, and senseless ravings. This constant noise-making of our obsessive thoughts keeps us from the experience of the Self we are. We are so used to this relentless noise in our minds that we may not even notice it anymore. Jesus calls on us to start noticing our thoughts and be vigilant in watching them, as much as we can, so we can recognize how the ego keeps us from peace. It does so, not because it has any power, but only that we give it power over us. We can withdraw our power whenever we choose not to listen to its demands and requirements of us.
God's Love is everything we are. There is no separation between who we really are and what God is. We are the expression of His Love. "His Love is everything you are and that He is; the same as you, and you the same as He." (W.125.7.4) There is no separation. We don't have to go anywhere to reach God. We just have to accept ourselves as who we are---the Christ Self. When our will is freed, it is the same as God's Will, although our experience is that we have made another will. He has never distanced Himself from us. In fact, "He speaks from nearer than your heart to you. His Voice is closer than your hand." (W.125.7.2-3)
God is absolutely not watching us from a distance, as in the song by Bette Midler. We are not trying to reach Him somewhere from afar. He is our very center, our heart center. When we don't experience Him, it is because we have made a choice for the ego, and now we identify with a separate will and believe we have made a separate self. We experience ourselves as a body and identity that is separate from God and living in the world rather than living in Him. In truth, there is no body. The body is a projection of the mind. It is an image made by the mind, a figure in this dream and not what we are. Jesus reminds us that the body only exists in the past and future and never in the present. When we experience the eternal moment (the holy instant), we have the experience of no body.
The thoughts occupying our mind distract us from the truth. These thoughts keep us from hearing God's Word. Our fear is that if we give our lives over to Him, He will not have our best interests in mind. Our fear is that we will have to sacrifice our self-interests if we let go of our own will. This is the fear of the god we made, which is the god of the ego. It is a god we think will demand that we sacrifice our joys and our pleasures. Think about what fears come up if you invite God to come into your life fully. What do you think might happen if you gave over your relationships, your money, your career, your health, your material possessions, and your special interests to God to manage for you? When I took the time to write down my fears and concerns about what God might do with my life, it made me realize how much I don't trust Him. Yes, I let Him into some areas of my life while keeping other parts for me to manage by myself. It is not the God of love that brings these fears to mind. It is the god of the ego that I am afraid to wake up to.
This exercise gives us a glimpse of the fear in our mind that we may not be aware of. This fear keeps us defended against His love. It is our fear of God and our belief He has abandoned us. We believe His love will annihilate us, but the reality is that nothing can happen against our will. Jesus describes us as the commander of our own journey. He tells us, "You have a Guide to how to develop them (your abilities), but you have no commander except yourself. This leaves you in charge of the Kingdom, with both a Guide to find it and a means to keep it. You have a model to follow (Jesus) who will strengthen your command, and never detract from it in any way. You therefore retain the central place in your imagined enslavement, which in itself demonstrates that you are not enslaved." (T.6.IV.9.4-7) (ACIM OE T.6.V.53) The goal of this Course is peace. We are well served when we focus on this goal, as it is where all our happiness lies. Our desire for peace and our devotion to God is the determining factor in how much we are willing to surrender to Him.
We are not led back to the truth by force but by love. He is a loving Father who does not control but leads us with His gentle love and counts on us to follow our own free will. There is no control and no coercion in Him. The essence of love is gentle and allowing. Our true will is ". . . forever free as God's," (W.125.2.2) but when we identify with the ego thought system, our will is bound. Though we may have wandered off and forgotten who we are, our Father has never disowned us but regards us as His beloved Son forever. He has not changed His mind about us. Our fear is that we are not good enough, not spiritual enough, and too caught up in our worldly desires to know ourselves as love. No matter what we have done, there are no consequences coming from our Father. We will be welcomed home no matter how far we have wandered from Him.
We may have wandered off, yet He is still there. He knows us and is not waiting for us to clean up our act before He reveals Himself to us. "He has not hid Himself from you, while you have wandered off a little while from Him." (W.125.5.2) His presence is with us now. There is nothing we need to do. We are the ones who have wandered off. In this moment, we can choose not to believe our ego thoughts, see them as totally unreal, and remember the only thing real is His love for us. "He does not cherish the illusions which you hold about yourself." (W.125.5.3) Thus, these beliefs we have of who we are, what we have done, and how we see ourselves and others, are not the truth because only love is real. Everything we experience in this world of pain, disillusionment, suffering, and distress is not real. Everything we believe is our hallucination! "All power is of God. What is not of Him has no power to do anything." (T.11.V.3.6-7) (ACIM OE T.10.42)
I felt overwhelmed with problems recently and felt extremely distressed and out of peace. Then I heard the loving presence of the Holy Spirit in my mind remind me that God does not bring suffering. It must, therefore, be of my own choosing. I am choosing to suffer because it brings me something I want. But if I am choosing it, I can change my mind, and with this change of mind, my perception of the situation shifts from fear and worry to peace. This is the miracle. "How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not true now, and never will be. The impossible has not occurred, and can have no effects." (T.31.I.1.1-3) (ACIM OE T.31.I.1)
We are asked not to ". . . judge ourselves today, for what we are cannot be judged." (W.125.3.2) We are also asked not to let the world determine what we are. "We stand apart from all the judgments which the world has laid upon the Son of God." (W.125.3.3) We have been deceived in thinking our identity consists of the concepts and beliefs we hold about ourselves that have been reinforced by the world. All we need to do is deny the false beliefs and recognize ". . . what is false cannot be true . . . " (T.31.I.1.7) (ACIM OE T.31.I.1) What holds the false in place is our beliefs about ourselves, none of which are true. Anything not of God is not true. He is constantly communicating His love to us, and we are listening to our own thoughts instead! "His Voice awaits your silence, for His Word cannot be heard until you mind is quiet for a while, and meaningless desires have been stilled." (W.125.6.2)
Jesus asks us to let this day be one of stillness and quiet listening. "We gather at the throne of God today, the quiet place within the mind where He abides forever, in the holiness that He created and will never leave." (W.125.4.3) What beautiful assurance of His place in our minds. He lives in our minds and waits for our willingness to choose the truth. We don't do this by good works or good deeds but by bringing our false beliefs to the truth. That is what forgiveness is.
We are learning through application of the Lessons to clear our minds and enter into the silence. Clearly, this is difficult for the untrained mind because the ego mind is still a regular distraction. The important thing is for us to notice our reactions without feeling guilty or making ourselves wrong. Yes, it does take lots of practice and our minds will continue to wander, but putting more pressure and demands on ourselves will not help. Simply bring your mind back to peace with each experience of distress as you do the practice in the Lesson. Allow related thoughts to help you focus your attention on the teaching.
We can also ask in our meditation for help in releasing our interfering thoughts so we can hear God's Voice and assure our minds that He is One with us, closer than our very breath. It is not about trying harder but by allowing, surrendering, and melting into the experience. There is no separation. It is our own voice. "His Love is everything you are and that He is; the same as you, and you the same as He." (W.125.7.4) There is no ". . . division in the single Mind of Father and of Son." (W.125.8.3) We are basically listening to our Self. It is not an alien will. It is our own true Will, one with God's Will. Ours is the freedom to choose whether we will continue to listen to the ego or to choose love, which is to choose to forgive our thoughts and make room for the Love already in us.
Love and blessings, Sarah
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Chapter Eleven
God's Plan for Salvation
Voice and Music by Martin Weber, CIMS SonShip Radio
VI. The Sane Curriculum
43 Only love is strong because it is
undivided. The strong do not attack because they see no need to do so.
Before the idea of attack can enter your mind, you must have
perceived yourself as weak. Because you had attacked yourself and believed that the attack was
effective, you behold yourself as weakened. No longer perceiving yourself and all your brothers as equal and regarding yourself as
weaker, you attempt to "equalize" the situation
you have made. You use attack to do so because you believe that attack was successful in weakening
you.
44 That is why the recognition of your
own invulnerability is so important in the restoration of your sanity. For if you accept your invulnerability, you are recognizing that attack
has no effect. Although you have attacked yourself, and very brutally, you will demonstrate that
nothing happened. Therefore, by attacking you have not done
anything. Once you realize this, there is no longer any
sense in attack, for it manifestly
does not work and
cannot protect you. Yet the recognition of your invulnerability has more than negative value. If your attacks on yourself have
failed to weaken you,
you are still strong. You therefore have no need to "equalize" the situation to establish your strength.
45 You will never realize the utter uselessness of attack
except by recognizing that your attack on
yourself had no effects. For others
do react to attack if they perceive it, and if you are trying to attack
them, you will be unable to avoid interpreting this as reinforcement. The
only place where you can cancel out all reinforcement is in
yourself. For
you are always the first point of your attack, and if
this has never been, it
has no consequences.
46 The Holy Spirit's love is your strength, for yours is divided and therefore not real. You could not trust your own love when you have
attacked it. You cannot learn of perfect love with a split mind because a split mind has
made itself a poor learner. You tried to make the separation eternal because you wanted to retain the characteristics of creation with your own
content. Yet creation is
not of you, and poor learners need special teaching. You have learning handicaps in a very literal sense.
47 There are areas in your learning skills which are so impaired that you can progress only under constant, clear-cut direction provided by a Teacher Who can
transcend your limited resources. He
becomes your resource because, of
yourself, you
cannot learn. The learning situation in which you placed yourself
is impossible, and in this situation you clearly require a special Teacher and a special curriculum. Poor learners are not good choices for teachers, either for themselves or for anyone else. You would hardly turn to
them to establish the curriculum by which they can
escape from their limitations. If they understood what is beyond them, they would not
be handicapped.
48 You do not know the meaning of love, and that
is your handicap. Do not attempt to teach yourselves what you do not understand, and do not try to set up curriculum goals where yours have clearly failed.
Your learning goal has been
not to learn, and this
cannot lead to successful learning. You cannot transfer what you have not learned, and the impairment of the ability to generalize is a crucial learning failure. Would you ask those who have
failed to learn what learning aids are
for? They do not know. For if they could interpret the aids correctly, they would have learned from them.
49 We have said that the ego's rule is, "Seek and do
not find." Translated into curricular terms, this is the same as saying, "
Try to learn but do
not succeed." The result of this curriculum goal is obvious. Every legitimate teaching aid, every real instruction, and every sensible guide to learning
will be misinterpreted. For they are all for learning facilitation, which this strange curriculum goal is
against. If you are trying to learn how
not to learn and are using the aim of teaching to
defeat itself, what can you expect
but confusion? The curriculum does not make
sense.
50 This kind of "learning" has so weakened your mind that you
cannot love, for the curriculum you have chosen is
against love and amounts to a course in
how to attack yourself. A necessary minor, supplementing this major curriculum goal, is learning how
not to overcome the split which made this goal believable. And you can
not overcome it, for all
your learning is on its
behalf. Yet your will speaks against your learning, as your learning speaks against your will, and so you fight
against learning and succeed, for that
is your will. But you do not realize even yet that there
is something you
do will to learn, and that you can learn it because it
is your will to do so.
51 You who have tried to learn what you do
not will should take heart, for although the curriculum you set yourself is depressing indeed, it is merely ridiculous if you look at it. Is it
possible that the way to achieve a goal is
not to attain it? Resign
now as your own teachers.
This resignation will
not lead to depression. It is merely the result of an honest appraisal of what you have taught yourselves and of the learning outcomes which have resulted. Under the proper learning conditions, which you can neither provide nor understand, you will become excellent learners and teachers. But it is not so yet and will not
be so until the whole learning situation as
you have set it up is reversed.
52 Your learning
potential, properly understood, is limitless because it will lead you to God. You can
teach the way to Him
and learn it if you follow the Teacher Who knows it and His curriculum for learning it. The curriculum is totally unambiguous because the goal is
not divided, and the means and the end are in
complete accord. You need offer only
undivided attention. Everything else will be
given you. For it is
your will to learn aright, and nothing can oppose the will of God's Son. His learning is as unlimited as
he is.
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