"Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.
Herein Lies the peace of God."
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A
Course in Miracles
TEXT
CHAPTER 14
Bringing Illusions to Truth
VI. The Shift to Miracles
46
When no perception stands between God and His creations, or between His Children and their own, the knowledge of creation must continue forever. The reflections which you accept into the mirror of your minds in time but bring eternity nearer or farther. But eternity itself is beyond
all
time. Reach out of time and touch it, with the help of its reflection in you. And you will turn from time to holiness as surely as the reflection of holiness calls everyone to lay all guilt aside. Reflect the peace of Heaven
here
and bring this world to Heaven. For the reflection of truth draws everyone
to
truth, and as they enter into it, they leave all reflections behind.
47
In Heaven reality is shared and not reflected. By sharing its reflection here, its truth becomes the only perception the Son of God accepts. And thus, remembrance of his Father dawns on him, and he can no longer be satisfied with anything but his own reality. You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in
is
a world of limits. In this world, it is not true that anything without order of difficulty can occur. The miracle, therefore, has a unique function and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings the laws of another world to this one. The miracle is the
one
thing you can do that transcends order, being based not on differences but on equality.
48
Miracles are not in competition, and the number of them that you can do is limitless. They can be simultaneous and legion. This is not difficult to understand, once you conceive of them as possible at all. What
is
more difficult to grasp is the lack of order of difficulty which stamps the miracle as something that must come from elsewhere, not from here. From the world's viewpoint, this is impossible. You have experienced lack of competition among your thoughts, which, even though they may conflict, can occur to you together and in great numbers. You are so used to this that it can cause you little surprise.
49
Yet you are also used to classifying some of your thoughts as more important, larger or better, wiser or more productive and valuable than others. And this is true about the thoughts which cross the mind of those who think they live apart. For some are reflections of Heaven, while others are motivated by the ego, which but
seems
to think. The result is a weaving, changing pattern which never rests and is never still. It shifts unceasingly across the mirror of your mind, and the reflections of Heaven last but a moment and grow dim as darkness blots them out. Where there was light, darkness removes it in an instant, and alternating patterns of light and darkness sweep constantly across your minds.
50
The little sanity which still remains is held together by a sense of order which
you
establish. Yet the very fact that you can
do
this and bring
any
order into chaos shows you that you are not an ego and that more than an ego
must
be in you. For the ego
is
chaos, and if it were all of you, no order at all would be possible. Yet though the order which you impose upon your minds limits the ego, it
also
limits
you
. To order is to judge and to arrange
by
judgment. [Therefore, it is not your function, but the Holy Spirit's.] It will seem difficult for you to learn that you have no basis
at all
for ordering your thoughts. This lesson the Holy Spirit teaches by giving you shining examples to show you that your way of ordering is wrong, but that a better way is offered you.
51
The miracle offers exactly the same response to every call for help. It does not judge the call. It merely recognizes what it
is
and answers accordingly. It does not consider which call is louder or greater or more important. You may wonder how you who are still bound to judgment can be asked to do that which requires no judgment of your own. The answer is very simple. The power of God, and
not
of you, engenders miracles. The miracle itself is but the witness that you have the power of God in you. That is the reason why the miracle gives equal blessing to all who share in it, and that is also why
everyone
shares in it. The power of God is limitless. And being always maximal, it offers
everything
to
every
call from
anyone
. There
is
no order of difficulty here. A call for help is given help.
52
The only judgment involved at all is the Holy Spirit's
one
division into two categories—one of love and the other the call for love.
You
cannot safely make this division, for you are much too confused either to recognize love or to believe that everything else is nothing but a need for love. You are too bound to form and not to content. What you consider content is not content at all. It is merely form, and nothing else. For you do not respond to what a brother
really
offers you, but only to the particular perception of his offering by which the ego judges it.
53
The ego is incapable of understanding content and is totally unconcerned with it. To the ego, if the form is acceptable, the content
must
be. Otherwise, it will attack the form. You who believe you understand something of the dynamics of the mind, let me assure you that you know nothing of it at all. For of yourselves you
could
not know of it. The study of the ego is
not
the study of the mind. In fact, the ego enjoys the study of itself and thoroughly approves the undertakings of students who would analyze it, approving its importance. Yet they but study form with meaningless content. For their teacher is senseless, though careful to conceal this fact behind a lot of words which sound impressive but which lack any consistent sense when they are put
together
.
54
This is characteristic of the ego's judgments. Separately, they seem to hold, but put them together and the system of thought which arises from joining them is incoherent and utterly chaotic. For form is not enough for meaning, and the underlying lack of content makes a cohesive system impossible. Separation therefore remains the ego's chosen condition. For no one alone can judge the ego truly. Yet when two or more
join together
in searching for truth, the ego can no longer defend its lack of content. The fact of union
tells
them it is not true.
55
It is impossible to remember God in secret and alone. For remembering Him means you are
not
alone and willing to remember it. Take no thought for yourself, for no thought you hold
is
for yourself. If you would remember your Father, let the Holy Spirit order your thoughts and give only the answer with which He answers you. Everyone seeks for love as you do and knows it not unless he joins with you in seeking it. If you undertake the search together, you bring with you a light so powerful that what you see is
given
meaning. The lonely journey fails because it has excluded what it would
find
.
56
As God communicates to the Holy Spirit in you, so does the Holy Spirit translate His communications
through
you so
you
can understand them. God has no secret communications, for everything of Him is perfectly open and freely accessible to all, being
for
all. Nothing lives in secret, and what you would hide from the Holy Spirit is nothing. Every interpretation
you
would lay upon a brother is senseless. Let the Holy Spirit
show
him to you and teach you both his love and need for love. Neither his mind
nor yours
holds more than these two orders of thought.
57
The miracle is the recognition that this is true. Where there is love, your brother must give it to you because of what it
is
. But where there is
need
for love,
you
must give it because of what
you
are. Long ago we said this course will teach you what you are, restoring to you your identity. We have already learned that this identity is shared. The miracle becomes the
means
of sharing it. By supplying your identity wherever it is
not
recognized,
you
will recognize it. And God Himself, Who wills to be with His Son forever, will bless each recognition of His Son with all the love He holds for him. Nor will the power of
all
His love be absent from any miracle you offer to His Son. How, then, can there be any order of difficulty among them?
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A Course in Miracles
WORKBOOK
Lesson 162
I am as God created me.
1
This single thought, held firmly in the mind, would save the world. From time to time we will repeat it, as we reach another stage in learning. It will mean far more to you as you advance. These words are sacred, for they are the words God gave in answer to the world you made. By them it disappears, and all things seen within its misty clouds and vaporous illusions vanish as these words are spoken. For they come from God.
2
Here is the Word by which the Son became His Father's happiness, His Love, and His completion. Here creation is proclaimed and honored as it is. There is no dream these words will not dispel, no thought of sin, and no illusion that the dream contains that will not fade away before their might. They are the trumpet of awakening that sounds around the world. The dead awake in answer to its call. And those who live and hear this sound will never look on death.
3
Holy indeed is he who makes these words his own—arising with them in his mind, recalling them throughout the day, at night bringing them with him as he goes to sleep. His dreams are happy and his rest secure, his safety certain and his body healed because he sleeps and wakens with the truth before him always. He will save the world because he gives the world what he receives each time he practices the words of truth.
4
Today we practice simply. For the words we use are mighty, and they need no thoughts beyond themselves to change the mind of him who uses them. So wholly is it changed that it is now the treasury in which God places all His gifts and all His Love to be distributed to all the world, increased in giving, kept complete because its sharing is unlimited. And thus you learn to think with God. Christ's vision has restored your sight by salvaging your mind.
5
We honor you today. Yours is the right to perfect holiness you now accept. With this acceptance is salvation brought to everyone, for who could cherish sin when holiness like this has blessed the world? Who could despair when perfect joy is yours, available to all as remedy for grief and misery, all sense of loss, and for complete escape from sin and guilt?
6
And who would not be brother to you now—you, his redeemer and his savior. Who could fail to welcome you into his heart with loving invitation, eager to unite with one like him in holiness? You are as God created you. These words dispel the night, and darkness is no more. The light is come today to bless the world, for you have recognized the Son of God, and in your recognition is the world's.
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ACIM Edmonton
Sarah's Reflections
Lesson 162
I am as God created me.
Right off the bat, Jesus tells us,
"This single thought,
[I am as God created me]
held firmly in the mind, would save the world."
(W.162.1.1) We are also told,
"These words are sacred, for they are the words God gave in answer to the world you made."
(W.162.1.4) Yet, they are just words to us until we experience the deep significance they actually have. When we experience the deep meaning of this single thought, it is indeed powerful because these words point to the truth of what we are. When we are told these words are sacred and given us by God, it is not because God actually gave these words to us, but because they reflect the truth of the Atonement principle, reminding us it is impossible to be separate from God, and indeed we are not separate, except in our dreams.
The power is in what these words convey, which is that we did not make ourselves. We have not stained our very being by our actions, and there is nothing we have done, nor could do, that could change the truth about ourselves. Why would we have resistance to this idea? And yet, we do. We believe we are: what we have made of ourselves, how we think about ourselves, what we believe our parents have made of us, and what the world has told us we are, and we have accepted all of it as true. All of this contributes to who we think we have become. It is all in the past, and it is where all our suffering comes from.
At a deep level of the mind, we hold the belief that we have turned ourselves from the pure, pristine beings created by God into something sinful. Guilt and shame accompany these beliefs. Therefore, when God's Word says that you are as I created you and you can't do anything to change the truth, we have a hard time deeply connecting with these facts. We resist these ideas because we have invested, instead, in what we think about ourselves. We value what we have made, even if we don’t like ourselves. Yet these words reflect the absolute truth of what we are through the symbol of Jesus in our minds. He negates our ideas of who we think we are and how we see ourselves.
These words also negate the dream of this world.
"There is no dream these words will not dispel. . . "
(W.162.2.3) They provide the Answer given by the Holy Spirit at the very instant the thought of separation from God entered the mind. With separation, came guilt. The world of form was projected from the mind that thought it had sinned and had to run from God and hide out in the world, but the truth dispels all this and simply honors Creation as it is. What this means is that nothing we think we have made of ourselves can change the truth of who we really are as God's perfect Son. These words are so mighty.
"They are the trumpet of awakening that sounds around the world"
(W.162.2.4) and dispels the notion of death. Thus, accepting the truth of these words and experiencing the holy instant helps us to reach beyond the separated state that we currently experience. These words point us to the truth and remind us of where we have always been.
We can say them over and over and feel like nothing changes in our minds, but we are assured that these words
". . . will mean far more to you as you advance."
(W.162.1.3) What this implies is that, at first, we may just be repeating words, but as we deepen in our spiritual development, the meaning of these words will speak to our hearts. We will experience the love and feel the connection with our Father and accept that we are His happiness, love, and completion. Reading, discussing, and talking about our spiritual practice is not true seeking. It is in applying the Lessons, watching our thoughts in each moment, and bringing the blocks to love to the inner altar, that peace and joy become a more constant experience. As we do the work of forgiveness, we open up to the truth of what Jesus is telling us here.
We need to be reminded of the truth often. In our minds is the memory of God's perfect Love, which is the symbol of the Holy Spirit. He is the reflection of the truth that resides in our right minds. We cannot change, and have not changed, this truth about ourselves. Yet we need these Lessons because we don't believe that we are these beautiful, magnificent souls created by Love, untainted by anything we have ever done. Instead, we identify with the stranger we have invited into our pristine home and allowed to possess us. We actually believe that the fear, guilt, and anger we experience, defines who we are.
When we identify with all these emotions, the truth about ourselves is what seems like an illusion to us. Yet Jesus assures us,
"There is no dream these words will not dispel; no thought of sin and no illusion which the dream contains that will not fade away before their might."
(W.162.2.3) No matter what we think we have done, what guilt and shame we carry, nor what problems beset us, there truly is no order of difficulty in miracles. Everything we thought we have done must be illusory if the only truth is that we are, and remain forever, as God created us. When we experience the miracle, our perception shifts from what we think we have made of ourselves to a glimpse of the perfection of our Being as the Christ Self.
The Atonement principle is God's assurance that no matter what thoughts we hold about ourselves, the only truth is that we still remain as we were created and can't change our reality. This is why, when we accept this single thought---I am as God created me---as the truth, what we think we have made of ourselves disappears. We can be unaware of our true reality as we were created, but we can't change our reality. It is such an important thought in the Course that it comes up in three other Lessons: (94, 110 and 162) and again in Lessons 210-220, where we remind ourselves daily,
"I am still as God created me
.
"
We do this, again and again, to allow it to become part of our whole thought system. We are opening our minds to the truth of this statement. The whole Course is focused on getting this thought into our minds as an experience. Acceptance of this thought can bring us back to ourselves. What beliefs, values, thoughts, and concepts are we allowing to stand in the way of our acceptance of this truth?
I received an email today, through David Hoffmeister, from someone in Spain who addressed the question of what it is that is keeping people from knowing the love they are. She itemized seven things, noted here with some editing on my part: 1) The more we hold onto personal preferences, the less we will recognize the love we are. 2) When we hold personal preferences, they interfere with our inner peace. Therefore, we must refine our ability to see how these preferences operate in our lives and let them go. 3) It is important to recognize we do not know our own best interests. 4) We need to recognize we give everything all the meaning it has for us. 5) Ultimately, nothing that seems to be happening is real, and if it does seem real, then it can be used as a prompt to release the feelings about it. 6) When the feelings of not being deserving enough, or good enough, or loveable enough, are there, then the evidence for them shows up in our world, which reinforces this false idea about ourselves. Therefore, it is important to recognize the mind as the cause. It is therefore in the mind that the work must be done to release the blocks to the awareness of the love we are. 7) Gratitude for everything that shows up is a helpful way through any situation when we are willing to see everything as a classroom for the undoing of the blocks to the presence of love.
In the Text, we learned that when we know any part of truth, we know it all. When we say,
"I am as God created me,"
(W.162) this implies that there is no sin, which in turn implies that I am not the thoughts I seem to think, which implies that I am not a body, which implies that the world is an illusion, which implies that I am still in the Mind of God, as ideas leave not their source. When we get this one truth, stated in these mighty sacred words, it is a springboard to take us beyond them to the experience of Oneness.
"Holy indeed is he who makes these words his own. . ."
(W.162.3.1) Jesus urges us to keep these words in our minds all day. Wake with them, recall them throughout the day, and go to sleep with this thought in our mind. My experience is that when I bring the power of this kind of thought into my nighttime dreaming, I actually find I am practicing the idea even in my sleep, and I wake with it in my awareness. It fundamentally changes the way I experience sleep, as well as awakening. There truly is amazing power in doing this practice consistently.
Today, accept your perfection and recognize that there is nothing you have ever done, no matter how shameful you think it may be, that has changed your reality in the slightest. There is no reason for guilt. You are still innocent. By keeping these words in our minds, our dreams are happy, our rest secure, our safety certain, our body healed, and the world is saved because we give the gifts we have received. Our experience of joy and peace affects everyone because we are One Mind. That is the power of the miracle, which is unlimited. As our minds are changed, we become channels for God's Love. Now, we have access to the treasury where it is all stored in our minds and is
"increased in giving
.
"
(W.162.4.3) Any thoughts we are holding that negate the truth can be released. We must be willing to look at the interferences to the truth in our minds and be willing to release them.
As we practice the Workbook Lessons more and more without making any exceptions by excluding anyone from our love, and as we delve deeper into our purpose and accept our
"right to perfect holiness,"
(W.162.5.2) we reflect God's Love in this world, which is forgiveness. We are given honor today, says Jesus, for our acceptance of the truth and for extending salvation and blessing to the world through our acceptance of our reality. Yet knowing the words and having the experience are not the same at all. Accepting the truth about ourselves is what is required. We can't make ourselves holy. It is our reality. We can't change that reality. Seeking to become holy is counterproductive. We just need to accept the truth of what we are by releasing all that stands in the way. There is nothing we can do to make ourselves into what we already are. Despair, grief, misery, and loss are conditions we have made and cherish, which make no sense when
"perfect joy is yours."
(W.162.5.4) The remedy for all our suffering has been laid out for us. It is the source of hope that we can offer to our brothers, as we learn to become a demonstration of God’s Love in the world. We show them that they can make the same choice we have made, not through any teaching or preaching, but only by our very presence as an example of having made the choice for truth.
The purpose of studying the Course is not to give us an improved theology or more "knowledge" about the nature of truth, but to bring us into the actual experience of Divine Love. It requires that we apply these teachings to our day-to-day experiences and allow our thought system to be changed. It starts with a willingness and a motivation to learn. It requires great willingness to let go of all scraps of illusion and thoughts of guilt, shame, unworthiness, and fear, which serve no purpose; and instead, we allow our minds to be completely retrained from fearful thoughts to acceptance of peace and joy through forgiveness. Applying the teachings of the Course fully and consistently (with the help of the Holy Spirit) will clear our minds of duality and bring them back to their original awareness, where all is One.
"You are as God created you."
(W.162.6.3)
"Holy indeed is he who makes these words his own; arising with them in his mind, recalling them throughout the day, at night bringing them with him as he goes to sleep."
(W.162.3.1)
"You are as God created you. These words dispel the night, and darkness is no more."
(W.162.6.3-4) Today, let us move to a deeper level of acceptance of the truth of this. It is a complete and total remedy for any despair, grief, misery, and loss, which is replaced by joy. It certainly motivates me not to hold onto thoughts that hurt me and to recognize that if I do continue to hold these thoughts, it is simply a decision to be miserable. When we are miserable, we are holding someone responsible for our condition. Why would we want to do this? Quite simply, we are still attached to our individual, separate self, and when we do this, someone is always to blame. Our fear of God's love keeps us in resistance.
Throughout the day, I choose to stay attentive to conflicts, judgments, pain, anger, distress, expectations, demands, and requirements that I am holding onto, and I remind myself that I have been mistaken in my choice for the ego, and in that choice, I have forgotten who I am. The only truth is ---we are as God created us. When we forget today, we can ask for help to be willing to let our untrue thoughts go so we can know the truth about ourselves. Only insanity keeps us in this hell. We have the ability to choose again, to see it all through the sanity in our right minds.
Love and blessings, Sarah
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