Sarah's Commentary:
There is a startling question in the Clarification of Terms, where God’s Voice asks,
"Are you ready yet to help me save the world?"
(C.2.9.1) What will my decision be? Am I ready to take my place among the saviors of the world? What does that mean anyway? What is required of me? Jesus tells us that to save the world is to heal our own minds. It is what time is for. Through the process of forgiveness, we come to know God's peace is in us and is ours. Forgiveness is the means for undoing the false belief that there is a world outside of us.
We are entrusted with His gifts.
"Love created me like Itself."
(W.67) Every attribute of God, I have. We are the love, and we have the love. It is why we can say,
"I am the light of the world."
(W.61) No matter what concepts we hold about ourselves, how we feel about our shortcomings, how unworthy we feel, or how lacking and deprived we feel we are, the power is within us to connect with the truth. First, we need to identify the false beliefs, values, and self-concepts that we hold, and then be willing to release them to the Holy Spirit by putting them on the inner altar. By simply watching them without judgment and seeing no value in them, we become the observer and recognize the Self that is behind the character in the dream. This is how we experience the light of our being---through our willingness to bring the false to the true.
There is no world apart from our thoughts. This is a radical concept, I know, but one that becomes more and more apparent as we do the healing. The world is in the mind, as nothing is outside of the mind. It is simply a reflection of what we are thinking and believing; but for now, we need to continue to do the forgiveness work of releasing the blocks to love, affirming our blessings, expressing gratitude, and increasingly accepting the truth that is our inheritance. We have tried to replace His truth with our own. We think we are the authors of our own lives, but there is only one Author. To think that we made ourselves is to believe that there is God, as well as something else. For us to exist, we had to take our seeming existence from God. What this looks like is a belief in duality, instead of a recognition of our Oneness. Now we think we are separate from each other.
As a result of our belief that we stole our identity from God, we now experience guilt and fear because the ego has sold us a bill of goods, telling us we did real damage to Creation and the Creator. We have bought into this fairy tale, but it is not the truth. We believe that we have wrecked our home, and now we are afraid to return. We are like the Prodigal son, who believes he stole his father's treasure and now must make his home with the pigs. Jesus tells us that we have simply forgotten the truth that is still in our minds. The truth is that we never left God, except in dreams where we dreamt that we wandered off. Now our minds are preoccupied with thoughts that are not true, and with a nagging, vague sense that we have done something terribly wrong and that, in fact, we ourselves are wrong.
All that is required of us in order to awaken to the truth of our reality is readiness and willingness. No more than this is asked of us. In fact, Jesus says,
"It is always the result of your small willingness combined with the unlimited power of God's Will"
(T.18.IV.4.2) (ACIM OE T.18.V.35) that brings us to the holy instant. It is not about trying to clean up our own act. He says,
"You have been wrong in thinking that it is needful to prepare yourself for Him. It is impossible to make arrogant preparations for holiness, and not believe that it is up to you to establish the conditions for peace."
(T.18.IV.4.3-4) (ACIM OE T.18.V.35) The conditions for peace are established by God, not by us. Our part is simply to be willing to be taught. No one will ever coerce us. Love waits patiently for our readiness.
Over and over we are told that we still need structure to get us to the formless. We are using the forms of this Workbook and doing the practice in order to achieve the goal of formlessness---our reality as the One Son. The specifics of our lives provide the classroom in which we have a special function based on our strengths and our abilities together with a universal function of forgiveness. The Holy Spirit deems us worthy of this function. It is only our arrogance that judges otherwise. We do have an important role to play in salvation, as does everyone. We must take our part and stop being small in the name of humility. Trying to be what we are not is our own arrogance, arguing with God as to what and who we are. The only way out of the imprisonment of our own plans is to accept His plan. It means we must spend our time in quiet listening in our morning and evening practice, and let the Holy Spirit guide our day.
"Do as God's Voice directs. And if It asks a thing of you which seems impossible, remember Who it is that asks, and who would make denial. Then consider this; which is more likely to be right? The Voice that speaks for the Creator of all things, Who knows all things exactly as they are, or a distorted image of yourself, confused, bewildered, inconsistent and unsure of everything?"
(W.186.12.1-4)
Let us focus today on refuting the voice of the ego by watching our thoughts and letting them go by without attachment. We enter deeply into our minds to that quiet place within where the Holy Spirit resides. Today, we choose to listen to His truth and not to our own ideas, which lead nowhere. We set our goal for peace. We take the time to go within to listen to guidance. The way to hear is to release the blocks to truth, which are the thoughts we hold in our minds. We continue to devote this day and every day to remembering the people and situations in our lives that offer us all the opportunities we need, throughout the day, to practice our function of forgiveness.
"What if you slept, and what if
in your sleep you dreamed,
And what if in your dream
you went to heaven and there
plucked a strange and beautiful flower,
and what if when you awoke
you had the flower in your hand?
Ah, what then?"
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Love and blessings, Sarah