"Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.
Herein Lies the peace of God."
A Course in Miracles
TEXT
PAUSED FOR WEEKEND

CHAPTER 20
The Promise of the Resurrection

VII. The Temple of the Holy Spirit

45 The meaning of the Son of God lies solely in his relationship with his Creator. If it were elsewhere, it would rest upon contingency, but there is nothing else. And this is wholly loving and forever. Yet has the Son of God invented an unholy relationship between him and his Father. His real relationship is one of perfect union and unbroken continuity. The one he made is partial, self-centered, broken into fragments, and full of fear. The one created by his Father is wholly self-encompassing and self-extending. The one he made is wholly self-destructive and self-limiting.

46 Nothing can show the contrast better than the experience of both a holy and an unholy relationship. The first is based on love and rests on it, serene and undisturbed. The body does not intrude upon it. Any relationship in which the body enters is based not on love, but on idolatry. 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. But idols do not share.

47 Idols accept, but never make return. They can be loved, but cannot love. They do not understand what they are offered, and any relationship in which they enter has lost its meaning. They live in secrecy, hating the sunlight and happy in the body's darkness where they can hide and keep their secrets hidden along with them. And they have no relationships, for no one else is welcome there. They smile on no one, and those who smile on them they do not see.

48 Love has no darkened temples where mysteries are kept obscure and hidden from the sun. It does not seek for power, but for relationships. The body is the ego's chosen weapon for seeking power through relationships. And its relationships must be unholy, for what they are, it does not even see. It wants them solely for the offerings on which its idols thrive. The rest it merely throws away, for all that it could offer is seen as valueless. Homeless, the ego seeks as many bodies as it can collect to place its idols in and so establish them as temples to itself.

49 The Holy Spirit's temple is not a body, but a relationship. The body is an isolated speck of darkness; a hidden secret room, a tiny spot of senseless mystery, a meaningless enclosure carefully protected, yet hiding nothing. Here the unholy relationship escapes reality and seeks for crumbs to keep itself alive. Here it would drag its brothers, holding them here in its idolatry. Here it is "safe," for here love cannot enter. The Holy Spirit does not build His temples where love can never be. Would He Who sees the face of Christ choose as His home the only place in all the universe where it can not be seen?

50 You cannot make the body the Holy Spirit's temple, and it will never be the seat of love. It is the home of the idolater and of love's condemnation. For here is love made fearful and hope abandoned. Even the idols that are worshiped here are shrouded in mystery and kept apart from those who worship them. This is the temple dedicated to no relationships and no return. Here is the "mystery" of separation perceived in awe and held in reverence. What God would have not be is here kept "safe" from Him. But what you do not realize is what you fear within your brother and would not see in him is what makes God seem fearful to you and kept unknown.

51 Idolaters will always be afraid of love, for nothing so severely threatens them as love's approach. Let love draw near them and overlook the body, as it will surely do, and they retreat in fear, feeling the seeming firm foundation of their temple begin to shake and loosen. Brothers, you tremble with them. Yet what you fear is but the herald of escape. This place of darkness is not your home. Your temple is not threatened. You are idolaters no longer. The Holy Spirit's purpose lies safe in your relationship and not your bodies. You have escaped the body. Where you are the body cannot enter, for the Holy Spirit has set His temple there.

52 There is no order in relationships. They either are or not. An unholy relationship is no relationship. It is a state of isolation which seems to be what it is not. No more than that. The instant that the mad idea of making your relationship with God unholy seemed to be possible, all your relationships were made meaningless. In that unholy instant, time was born and bodies made to house the mad idea and give it the illusion of reality. And so it seemed to have a home that held together for a little while in time and vanished. For what could house this mad idea against reality but for an instant?

53 Idols must disappear and leave no trace behind their going. The unholy instant of their seeming power is frail as is a snowflake, but without its loveliness. Is this the substitute you want for the eternal blessing of the holy instant and its unlimited beneficence? Is the malevolence of the unholy relationship, so seeming powerful and so bitterly misunderstood and so invested in a false attraction, your preference to the holy instant which offers you peace and understanding? Then lay aside the body and quietly transcend it, rising to welcome what you really want. And from His holy temple, look you not back on what you have awakened from. For no illusions can attract the minds that have transcended them and left them far behind.

54 The holy relationship reflects the true relationship the Son of God has with his Father in reality. The Holy Spirit rests within it in the certainty it will endure forever. Its firm foundation is eternally upheld by truth, and love shines on it with the gentle smile and tender blessing it offers to its own. Here the unholy instant is exchanged in gladness for the holy one of safe return. Here is the way to true relationships held gently open, through which you walk together, leaving the body thankfully behind and resting in the Everlasting Arms. Love's arms are open to receive you and give you peace forever.

55 The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh and then projected outward. This produces what seems to be a wall of flesh around the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant seems to be life; an instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by to offer his devotion to death's idols, and then pass on. And here he is more dead than living. Yet it is also here he makes his choice again between idolatry and love.

56 Here it is given him to choose to spend this instant paying tribute to the body or let himself be given freedom from it. Here he can accept the holy instant, offered him to replace the unholy one he chose before. And here can he learn relationships are his salvation and not his doom. You who are learning this may still be fearful, but you are not immobilized. The holy instant is of greater value now to you than its unholy seeming counterpart, and you have learned you really want but one. This is no time for sadness. Perhaps confusion, but hardly discouragement.

57 You have a real relationship, and it has meaning. It is as like your real relationship with God as equal things are like unto each other. Idolatry is past and meaningless. Perhaps you fear each other a little yet; perhaps a shadow of the fear of God remains with you. Yet what is that to those who have been given one true relationship beyond the body? Can they be long held back from looking on the face of Christ? And can they long withhold the memory of their relationship with their Father from themselves and keep remembrance of His love apart from their awareness?

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Part II
What is Salvation.

1 Salvation is a promise made by God that you would find your way to Him at last. It cannot not be kept. It guarantees that time will have an end, and all the thoughts that have been born in time will end as well. God's Word is given every mind which thinks that it has separate thoughts and will replace these thoughts of conflict with the Thought of peace.

2 The Thought of peace was given to God's Son the instant that his mind had thought of war. There was no need for such a Thought before, for peace was given without opposite and merely was. But when the mind is split, there is a need of healing. So the Thought which has the power to heal the split became a part of every fragment of the mind that still was one but failed to recognize its oneness. Now it did not know itself and thought its own identity was lost.

3 Salvation is undoing in the sense that it does nothing, failing to support the world of dreams and malice. Thus it lets illusions go. By not supporting them, it merely lets them quietly go down to dust. And what they hid is now revealed—an altar to the holy Name of God whereon His Word is written, with the gifts of your forgiveness laid before it and the memory of God not far behind.

4 Let us come daily to this holy place and spend a while together. Here we share our final dream. It is a dream in which there is no sorrow, for it holds a hint of all the glory given us by God. The grass is pushing through the soil, the trees are budding now, and birds have come to live within their branches. Earth is being born again in new perception. Night has gone, and we have come together in the light.

5 From here we give salvation to the world, for it is here salvation was received. The song of our rejoicing is the call to all the world that freedom is returned, that time is almost over, and God's Son has but an instant more to wait until his Father is remembered, dreams are done, eternity has shined away the world, and only Heaven now exists at all.

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Lesson 231
Father, I will but to remember You.

1 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. Let me remember You. What else could I desire but the truth about myself?

2 This is your will, my brother. And you share this will with me, and with the One as well Who is our Father. To remember Him is Heaven. This we seek. And only this is what it will be given us to find.

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Lesson 231
Father, I will but to remember You.

 Sarah's Commentary:
 
Clearly, at the deepest level of our minds, Jesus tells us that the only thing we truly want is to remember God and to know His Love. "This is your will, my brother. And you share this will with me [Jesus talking] and with the One as well Who is our Father." (W.231.2.1)
 
Jesus is aware that we do not necessarily think this is completely true for us. We still think that there are other things we want. We still fear that God demands sacrifice from us. Our fear is that if we completely choose His Will, we will be annihilated. Our fear creates an obstacle to complete acceptance of His love. Jesus recognizes our fear. He knows that we still search for happiness in the world. "Perhaps I think I seek for something else; a something I have called by many names." (W.231.1.2)
 
This may be fame, fortune, romance, security, family, a good time, a career, or anything we think we currently lack. They are all forms of specialness through which we seek the love that we believe we don’t have in us. Whatever the forms we seek in the world, Jesus reminds us that there is nothing to feel guilty about when we seek for happiness, as we define it. We came here to have this experience, and we will do what we came here to do. Yet, we seek for what can never be found in anything in the world. Until we come to that realization, we will continue to seek. It is only when we choose to look within, where our happiness already exists, that we will know we already have everything we seek. Love, joy, and peace are what we truly want and what we have been given in our Creation.
 
In the movie, Bedazzled , the character Elliot, played by Brendon Fraser, thinks he knows what he needs and makes a pact with the devil to receive his wishes only to find there is no true happiness, peace, contentment, joy, nor anything of lasting value in his idle wishes when they are achieved. His wishes are granted by the devil, but there is always a malevolent element to each wish that he did not expect. Of course, many of us have had this same experience; but we still cling to our desires, trying one more time to find happiness in the things of the world. Only when we recognize that the search is pointless will we acknowledge that our will is only to remember God, thus reconnecting with the truth of what we are and where the source of our real joy and peace truly lie.
 
When we apply the thought system of this teaching to our lives, we increasingly see that the things of the world ultimately have not brought us peace, joy, nor a sense of wholeness. There have perhaps been many moments or even periods of pleasure in our lives, but they have no lasting effect and, ultimately, end in more suffering. Only a reconnection to our Source can bring us fulfillment. We are not asked to sacrifice any of our perceived pleasures while we still believe in their value. We will learn, over time, that they are very fleeting and our interest in them as a source of love and joy will simply fall away. Increasingly, we will find that true and lasting joy is the outcome of continually bringing our mistaken perspectives to the Light.
 
As each layer of misperception is healed, deeper layers of the mind are revealed for healing. While this may bring resistance and potentially more conflict into our lives, returning to the thought system of the ego is not an option. Yes, it takes courage to go into the darkness; but, it is the only way to discover the light that has always been there, under the guilt and fear we hold in the mind. The sin, guilt, and fear that we hold produces every difficulty we experience in our lives and any problem we perceive. Until we became immersed in this teaching, we were not aware that the thoughts we hold in the mind are the cause of all our difficulties. We had believed, instead, that our difficulties mostly came from problems that seemed to be imposed on us from the world. We had reversed cause and effect, believing that the world was the cause of our problems, rather than our own minds. Trying to solve these problems in form will never address the real problem, which is our choice for separation, and with it, the thought system of the ego based on sin, guilt, and fear.
 
All of these Lessons keep pointing out the same thing, which is that we have been mistaken in listening to the ego and that now we have the opportunity to make another choice and turn to another Teacher in our right minds. Jesus is showing us that this is the only way out of despair. It is about letting go of our way and putting trust in His way. What we have sought for in the world has not, and will not, work to bring us true and lasting peace and joy. It will never bring us the deep peace that is our inheritance because our peace is covered over with the deep sleep of amnesia.
 
We now have a new "What is?" section, and again we read this section for ten days as we do each Lesson, starting today with "What Is Salvation?" (W.PII.Q2) We are offered a definition that is a clear departure from the Christian perspective. To be saved in traditional Christian thinking, we must suffer and sacrifice, just like Jesus was perceived to have done through his crucifixion. It is all about atoning for our sins. Jesus tells us that all we are saved from is the belief that we have sinned and that we are guilty. As a result of our decision to believe the myth of the ego--- that we have killed God and left our home in Heaven---we now feel tremendous guilt. Therefore, the only thing we need to be saved from is our mistaken choice for the ego thought system. Clearly, who we really are does not need any salvation.
 
We save ourselves by taking responsibility for our dark thoughts and bringing them to the Holy Spirit. We must want this above all else. To do so, we must resist our desire to defend and recognize that our safety lies in defenselessness. We must be willing to be vulnerable, to trust in guidance, to give up thinking that we know anything, and to be radically self-honest. There is no one outside of ourselves to save us. The light is within us. The Holy Spirit is a symbol of that light and is part of our own mind. We have chosen the wrong mind where the ego rules, but we have a right mind, which is home to the Holy Spirit. Now we know that we have a choice. The healing light of the Holy Spirit is what saves us from the domination of the ego when we are willing to turn over our unhealed thoughts. In other words, we choose forgiveness, or the miracle. It is a decision to remember what we are in truth by being willing to surrender the blocks to love and place them on the inner altar where the light shines them away.
 
"Salvation is a promise, made by God, that you would find your way to Him at last." (W.PII.Q2.1.1) It is no idle promise, but a certainty. "It cannot but be kept. It guarantees that time will have an end" (W.PII.Q2.1.2-3) and all our thoughts of conflict will end and be replaced by "the Thought of peace." (W.PII.Q2.1.4) We can be certain of this because we are already saved. In this very moment, we are already at home in God, but in our sleeping state, we are not aware of this fact. We need not get discouraged because our reality is assured. We are given assurance that we have never left God's Mind and are still One with Him. We experience that power when we let illusions go.
 
What His promise establishes is the Atonement Principle, which is that we have never left God and have never changed ourselves into these human beings who are striving for the "goodies" of this world. We are still One with God, dreaming of exile. So how could the promise not hold true when it is already the truth about us? We are simply unaware of it. Through forgiveness, we open space in our minds for the truth. Through forgiveness, the mistaken choice for the ego mind is undone. This is what salvation offers. The power to undertake the undoing process comes from our own decision. It comes as part of our agreement to look at the ego that is at work in our lives and choose against it, with the help of the Holy Spirit.
 
We will never be thrust into awakening. The process is gentle. We determine how quickly we go. As Jesus reminds us, "My salvation comes from me." (W.70) All guilt is solely an invention of the mind. While it is tempting to lay blame elsewhere, which would make me a victim of outside forces, it also keeps me locked in the ego dream. As we recognize that we share God's Will for happiness and accept His promise into our minds, we are born again in Christ. In the undoing of all that interferes with our awareness of the Christ Self, all thoughts of conflict are replaced with the Thought of Peace.

Love and blessings, Sarah

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