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All things work together for good. There are no exceptions except in the ego's judgment. Par 69
ACIM OE TEXT
CH 4 THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL
Workbook for Students
Part I
Introduction
1 A theoretical foundation such as the text is necessary as a background to make these exercises meaningful. Yet it is the exercises which will make the goal possible. An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of these exercises to train the mind to think along the lines which the course sets forth.

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Workbook for Students
Part I
Lesson 46
God is the Love
in which I forgive.
1 God does not forgive because He has never condemned. And there must be condemnation before forgiveness is necessary. Forgiveness is the great need of this world, but that is because it is a world of illusions. Those who forgive are thus releasing themselves from illusions, while those who withhold forgiveness are binding themselves to them. As you condemn only yourself, so do you forgive only yourself.

2 Although God does not forgive, His Love is nevertheless the basis of forgiveness. Fear condemns, and love forgives. Forgiveness thus undoes what fear has produced, returning the mind to the awareness of God. For this reason, forgiveness can truly be called salvation. It is the means by which illusions disappear.

3 Today's exercises require at least three full five-minute practice periods and as many shorter applications as possible. Begin the practice periods by repeating today's idea to yourself, as usual. Close your eyes as you do so and spend a minute or two in searching your mind for those whom you have not forgiven. It does not matter "how much" you have not forgiven. You have forgiven them entirely or not at all.

4 If you are doing the exercises well, you should have no difficulty in finding a number of people you have not forgiven. It is a safe rule that anyone you do not like is a suitable subject. Mention each one by name and say:

5 God is the Love in which I forgive you, [name].

6 The purpose of the first phase of today's practice is to put you in the best position to forgive yourself. After you have applied the idea for today to all those who have come to mind, tell yourself,

7 God is the Love in which I forgive myself.

8 Then devote the remainder of the practice period to offering related ideas such as:

9 God is the Love with which I love myself. God is the Love in which I am blessed.

10 The form of the applications may vary considerably, but the central idea should not be lost sight of. You might say, for example:

11 I cannot be guilty because I am a Son of God. I have already been forgiven.
No fear is possible in a mind beloved of God. There is no need to attack because Love has forgiven me.

12 The practice period should end, however, with a repetition of today's idea as originally stated.

13 The shorter applications may consist either of a repetition of the idea for today in the original or in a related form, or in more specific applications if needed. They will be needed at any time during the day when you become aware of any kind of negative reaction to anyone, present or not. In this event, tell him silently,

14 God is the Love in which I forgive you.
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Lesson ARCHIVE
Course in Miracles
Original Edition
TEXT
Chapter 4
The Root of All Evil

VI. The Ego-Body Illusion
par 69-80
[PAUSED FOR WEEKEND]
69 All things work together for good. There are no exceptions except in the ego's judgment. Control is a central factor in what the ego permits into consciousness and one to which it devotes its maximum vigilance. This is not the way a balanced mind holds together. Its control is unconscious. The ego is further off balance by keeping its primary motivation unconscious and raising control rather than sensible judgment to predominance. The ego has every reason to do this according to the thought system which gave rise to it and which it serves. Sane judgment would inevitably judge against the ego and must be obliterated by the ego in the interest of its self-preservation.

70 A major source of the ego's off-balanced state is its lack of discrimination between impulses from God and from the body. Any thought system which makes this confusion must be insane. Yet this demented state is essential to the ego, which judges only in terms of threat or non-threat to itself. In one sense the ego's fear of the idea of God is at least logical, since this idea does dispel the ego. Fear of dissolution from the Higher Source, then, makes some sense in ego-terms. But fear of the body, with which the ego identifies so closely, is more blatantly senseless.

71 The body is the ego's home by its own election. It is the only identification with which the ego feels safe, because the body's vulnerability is its own best argument that you cannot be of God. This is the belief that the ego sponsors eagerly. Yet the ego hates the body because it does not accept the idea that the body is good enough to be its home. Here is where the mind becomes actually dazed. Being told by the ego that it is really part of the body and that the body is its protector, the mind is also constantly informed that the body can not protect it. This, of course, is not only accurate but perfectly obvious.

72 Therefore the mind asks, "Where can I go for protection?" to which the ego replies, "Turn to me." The mind, and not without cause, reminds the ego that it has itself insisted that it is identified with the body, so there is no point in turning to it for protection. The ego has no real answer to this because there is none, but it does have a typical solution. It obliterates the question from the mind's awareness. Once unconscious, the question can and does produce uneasiness, but it cannot be answered because it cannot be asked. This is the question which must be asked: "Where am I to go for protection?" Even the insane ask it unconsciously, but it requires real sanity to ask it consciously.

73 When the Bible says, "Seek and ye shall find," it does not mean that you should seek blindly and desperately for something you would not recognize. Meaningful seeking is consciously undertaken, consciously organized, and consciously directed. The goal must be formulated clearly and kept in mind. As a teacher with some experience, let me remind you that learning and wanting to learn are inseparable. All learners learn best when they believe that what they are trying to learn is of value to them. However, values in this world are hierarchical, and not everything you may want to learn has lasting value.

74 Indeed, many of the things you want to learn are chosen because their value will not last. The ego thinks it is an advantage not to commit itself to anything that is eternal because the eternal must come from God. Eternalness is the one function which the ego has tried to develop but has systematically failed. It may surprise you to learn that had the ego wished to do so it could have made the eternal because, as a product of the mind, it is endowed with the power of its own creator. However, the decision to do this, rather than the ability to do it, is what the ego cannot tolerate. That is because the decision, from which the ability would naturally develop, would necessarily involve accurate perception, a state of clarity which the ego, fearful of being judged truly, must avoid.

75 The results of this dilemma are peculiar, but no more so than the dilemma itself. The ego has reacted characteristically here as elsewhere because mental illness, which is always a form of ego involvement, is not a matter of reliability as much as of validity. The ego compromises with the issue of the eternal, just as it does with all issues that touch on the real question in any way. By compromising in connection with all tangential questions, it hopes to hide the real question and keep it out of mind. The ego's characteristic busyness with non-essentials is for precisely that purpose.

76 Consider the alchemist's age-old attempts to turn base metal into gold. The one question which the alchemist did not permit himself to ask was, "What for?" He could not ask this because it would immediately become apparent that there was no sense in his efforts even if he succeeded. If gold became more plentiful, its value would decrease, and his own purpose would be defeated. The ego has countenanced some strange compromises with the idea of the eternal, making many odd attempts to relate the concept to the unimportant in an effort to satisfy the mind without jeopardizing itself. Thus, it has permitted minds to devote themselves to the possibility of perpetual motion, but not to perpetual thoughts.

77 Ideational preoccupations with problems set up to be incapable of solution are also favorite ego devices for impeding the strong-willed from making real learning progress. The problems of squaring the circle and carrying pi to infinity are good examples. A more recent ego attempt is particularly noteworthy. The idea of preserving the body by suspension, thus giving it the kind of limited immortality which the ego can tolerate, is among its more recent appeals to the mind. It is noticeable, however, that in all these diversionary tactics, the one question which is never asked by those who pursue them is, "What for?"

78 This is the question which you must learn to ask in connection with everything your mind wishes to undertake. What is the purpose? Whatever it is, you cannot doubt that it will channelize your efforts automatically. When you make a decision of purpose, then, you have made a decision about your future effort, a decision which will remain in effect unless you change the decision.

79 Psychologists are in a good position to realize that the ego is capable of making and accepting as real some very distorted associations. The confusion of sex with aggression and the resulting behavior, which is perceived as the same for both, serves as an example. This is "understandable" to the psychologist and does not produce surprise. The lack of surprise, however, is not a sign of understanding. It is a symptom of the psychologist's ability to accept as reasonable a compromise which is clearly senseless—to attribute it to the mental illness of the patient rather than his own and to limit his questions about both the patient and himself to the trivial.

80 Such relatively minor confusions of the ego are not among its more profound misassociations, although they do reflect them. Your egos have been blocking the more important questions which your minds should ask. You do not understand a patient while you yourselves are willing to limit the questions you raise about his mind because you are also accepting these limits for yours. This makes you unable to heal him and yourselves. Be always unwilling to adapt to any situation in which miracle-mindedness is unthinkable. That state in itself is enough to demonstrate that the perception is wrong.
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Sarah's Reflections

Lesson 46
God is the Love in which I forgive.
Sarah's Commentary:
 
How do you think about who God is? If you think He made this world where people suffer and die, you may wonder what kind of God would let all that happen. He cannot be perfect love and still be responsible for the condition of this world. God is not both wrathful and loving. God is only Love, and there is no separation between this God of Love and the Self we are. If we buy into the story of Adam and Eve, we buy into the concept that God banished them from paradise for eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This means God set up this scenario in the first place and tested Adam and Eve to see if they would do the wrong thing. God, being God, would have known this temptation would lead to their fall, wouldn't He? Why would we trust a God as manipulative as that? A loving God would not do that.

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Love and blessings, Sarah

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Allen Watson's
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Allen joined Robert Perry in forming the Circle of Atonement in 1993 in Sedona, Arizona where Allen led retreats and workshops and authored many books based on “A Course in Miracles.” One of his most popular books is:

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