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The world is fair because the Holy Spirit has brought injustice to the light within, and there has all unfairness been resolved and been replaced with justice and with love. If you perceive injustice anywhere, you need but say:
91
By this do I deny the Presence of the Father and the Son. And I would rather know of Them than see injustice, which Their Presence shines away.
CHAPTER 26: THE TRANSITION
XI.
THE REMAINING TASK
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Workbook for Students
Part II
What is the Holy Spirit?
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1The Holy Spirit mediates between illusions and the truth. As He must bridge the gap between reality and dreams, perception leads to knowledge through the grace that God has given Him, to be His gift to everyone who turns to Him for truth. Across the bridge that He provides are dreams all carried to the truth, to be dispelled before the light of knowledge. There are sights and sounds forever laid aside. And where they were perceived before, forgiveness has made possible perception's tranquil end.
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Workbook for Students
Lesson 286
The hush of Heaven
holds my heart today.
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1
Father, how still today! How quietly do all things fall in place! This is the day that has been chosen as the time in which I come to understand the lesson that there is no need that I do anything. In You is every choice already made. In You has every conflict been resolved. In You is everything I hope to find already given me. Your peace is mine. My heart is quiet and my mind at rest. Your Love is Heaven, and Your Love is mine.
2 The stillness of today will give us hope that we have found the way and travelled far along it to a wholly certain goal. Today we will not doubt the end which God Himself has promised us. We trust in Him and in our Self, Who still is one with Him.
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Lesson ARCHIVE
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Course in Miracles
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Text
Chapter 26
The Transition
X. For They Have Come
par 77-84
[TEXT READING PAUSED FOR WEEKEND]
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77 Think but how holy you must be from whom the Voice for God calls lovingly unto your brother, that you may awake in him the Voice that answers to your call! And think how holy he must be when in him sleeps your own salvation with his freedom joined! However much you wish he be condemned, God is in him. And never will you know He is in you as well, while you attack His chosen home and battle with His host. Regard him gently. Look with loving eyes on him who carries Christ within him, that you may behold His glory and rejoice that Heaven is not separate from you.
78 Is it too much to ask a little trust for him who carries Christ to you, that you may be forgiven all your sins and left without a single one you cherish still? Forget not that a shadow held between your brother and yourself obscures the face of Christ and memory of God. And would you trade Them for an ancient hate? The ground whereon you stand is holy ground because of Them Who, standing there with you, have blessed it with Their innocence and peace.
79 The blood of hatred fades to let the grass grow green again and let the flowers be all white and sparkling in the summer sun. What was a place of death has now become a living temple in a world of light. Because of Them. It is Their Presence which has lifted holiness again to take its ancient place upon an ancient throne. Because of Them have miracles sprung up as grass and flowers on the barren ground which hate had scorched and rendered desolate. What hate has wrought have They undone. And now you stand on ground so holy Heaven leans to join with it and make it like itself. The shadow of an ancient hate has gone, and all the blight and withering have passed forever from the land where They have come.
80 What is a hundred or a thousand years to Them, or tens of thousands? When They come, time's purpose is fulfilled. What never was passes to nothingness when They have come. What hatred claimed is given up to love, and freedom lights up every living thing and lifts it into Heaven, where the lights grow ever brighter as each one comes home. The incomplete is made complete again, and Heaven's joy has been increased because what is its own has been restored to it. The bloodied earth is cleansed, and the insane have shed their garments of insanity to join Them on the ground whereon you stand.
81 Heaven is grateful for this gift of what has been withheld so long. For They have come to gather in Their Own. What has been locked is opened; what was held apart from light is given up, that light may shine on it, and leave no space nor distance lingering between the light of Heaven and the world.
82 The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love. And They come quickly to the living temple, where a home for Them has been set up. There is no place in Heaven holier. And They have come to dwell within the temple offered them, to be Their resting-place as well as yours. What hatred has released to love becomes the brightest light in Heaven's radiance. And all the lights in Heaven brighter grow, in gratitude for what has been restored.
83 Around you angels hover lovingly, to keep away all darkened thoughts of sin and keep the light where it has entered in. Your footprints lighten up the world, for where you walk forgiveness gladly goes with you. No one on earth but offers thanks to one who has restored his home and sheltered him from bitter winter and the freezing cold. And shall the Lord of Heaven and His Son give less in gratitude for so much more?
84 Now is the temple of the Living God rebuilt as host again to Him by Whom it was created. Where He dwells, His Son dwells with Him, never separate. And They give thanks that They are welcome made at last. Where stood a cross stands now the risen Christ, and ancient scars are healed within His sight. An ancient miracle has come to bless and to replace an ancient enmity that came to kill. In gentle gratitude do God the Father and the Son return to what is Theirs and will forever be. Now is the Holy Spirit's purpose done. For They have come! For They have come at last!
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Course in Miracles
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Chapter 26
The Transition
XI. The Remaining Task
par 85-91
[TEXT READING PAUSED FOR WEEKEND]
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85 What then remains to be undone for you to realize Their Presence? Only this—you have a differential view of when attack is justified and when you think it is unfair and not to be allowed. When you perceive it as unfair, you think that a response of anger now is just. And thus you see what is the same as different. Confusion is not limited. If it occurs at all, it will be total. And its presence, in whatever form, will hide Their Presence. They are known with clarity or not at all. Confused perception will block knowledge. It is not a question of the size of the confusion or how much it interferes. Its simple presence shuts the door to Theirs and keeps Them there unknown.
86 What does it mean if you perceive attack in certain forms to be unfair to you? It means that there must be some forms in which you think it
fair. For otherwise, how could some be evaluated as unfair? Some then are given meaning and perceived as sensible. And only some are seen as meaningless. And this denies the fact that
all are senseless—equally without a cause or consequence and cannot have effects of
any kind. Their Presence is obscured by any veil which stands between Their shining innocence and your awareness it is your own and
equally belongs to every living thing along with you. God limits not. And what is limited can
not be Heaven. So it
must be hell.
87 Unfairness and attack are
one mistake, so firmly joined that where one is perceived, the other must be seen. You cannot
be unfairly treated. The belief you are is but another form of the idea you are deprived by someone not yourself. Projection of the cause of sacrifice is at the root of everything perceived to be unfair and not your just deserts. Yet it is
you who ask this of yourself in deep injustice to the Son of God. You have no enemy except yourself, and you are enemy indeed to him because you do not know him
as yourself. What could be more unjust than that he be deprived of what he
is, denied the right to be himself, and asked to sacrifice his Father's love and yours as not his due?
88 Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated. In this view, you seek to find an innocence which is not Theirs but yours alone and at the cost of someone else's guilt. Can innocence be purchased by the giving of your guilt to someone else? And
is this innocence which your attack on him attempts to get? Is it not retribution for your own attack upon the Son of God you seek? Is it not safer to believe that you are innocent of this and victimized despite your innocence? Whatever way the game of guilt is played, there
must be loss. Someone must lose his innocence that someone else can take it from him, making it his own.
89 You think your brother is unfair to you because you think that one must be unfair to make the other innocent. And in this game do you perceive one purpose for your whole relationship. And this you seek to add unto the purpose given it. The Holy Spirit's purpose is to let the Presence of your holy Guests be known to you. And to this purpose, nothing
can be added, for the world is purposeless except for this. To add or take away from this
one goal is but to take away all purpose from the world and from yourself. And each unfairness that the world appears to lay upon you,
you have laid on
it by rendering it purposeless, without the function that the Holy Spirit sees. And simple justice has been thus denied to every living thing upon the earth.
90 What this injustice does to you who judge unfairly and who see as you have judged, you cannot calculate. The world grows dim and threatening, and not a trace of all the happy sparkle that salvation brought can you perceive to lighten up your way. And so you see yourself deprived of light, abandoned to the dark, unfairly left without a purpose in a futile world. The world is fair because the Holy Spirit has brought injustice to the light within, and there has all unfairness been resolved and been replaced with justice and with love. If you perceive injustice anywhere, you need but say:
91
By this do I deny the Presence of the Father and the Son. And I would rather know of Them than see injustice, which Their Presence shines away.
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ACIM Edmonton
Sarah's Reflections
Lesson 286
The hush of Heaven
holds my heart today.
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Sarah's Commentary:
What is it that causes us to experience a frenetic day, rather than one where we rest in God in the quiet center of our Being where
"The hush of Heaven holds my heart today"?
It is related to the belief that we hold about the concept of time. As David Hawkins wrote in the
Eye of the I:
"Once the pressure of time ceases, it is recognized to have been perhaps one of the primary sources of distress that accompanies the human condition. The sense of time creates stress, pressure, anxiety, fear and endless disgruntlement in a myriad of ways. The 'time stress' accompanies all activities and pursuits, creating the illusion of sequence and cause. Every human action is couched in an unspoken pressure cooker of time and the mind constantly calculates how much 'time' can be 'spent' at every activity. This results in panic, fear or worry as well as guilt, shame and anger. 'Too much time spent on this. Not enough time spent on that. There are many things we would like to do but we don't have enough time. Time will run out.' Until the sensation of time stops, one does not have any possibility of knowing what real freedom or peace feels like."
And that is what Eckhart Tolle talks about as well in,
The Power of Now.
In the present moment, there is no story to tell, there is nothing to do, there is nowhere to go, and all is perfect. All suffering ceases when we return to our Source---to the Self. In this place, we are released from the dream, all fears are seen as groundless, and all worries are foolish imaginings. With no future, there can be no fear, and with no past, there can be no regret. Whatever appears to be happening in the illusion, where the storms appear to assault us, Jesus assures us,
"In You has every conflict been resolved."
(W.286.1.5) It doesn't feel this way in the apparent upheavals of our lives. It seems to us that there is a lot to do to address what seems to be happening. Yet,
"In You is every choice already made,"
(W.286.1.4) and so we can rest in the assurance that everything has already been addressed, and all we are called to do is to choose peace and rest in God.
Jesus reminds us over and over that we are home in Heaven right now, and that we never left our home. All that happened is that we went to sleep and are dreaming that we have been exiled from our home and cast into the world. Instead of seeing that we are the ones who left our home, we feel abandoned by God, but the whole story is already over. We are just reviewing it in our minds, believing in the sequence of time. It is all already over. The moment we had a thought of separation, the Holy Spirit healed it. Nothing happened in reality.
We are still pristine extensions of God. Everything that seems to have happened in our dream has no reality. There is nothing to atone for and nothing to fix. If we are watching a movie of blood and gore, when it is over, we don't run up to the screen and try to clean it. Nothing has happened on the screen and, in the same way, nothing has happened that could mess up our pristine nature in the movie of our lives. We don't have to fix anything from the past, as there is no past. Now we are called to respond to circumstances as they appear to confront us and choose to respond with peace and forgiveness. In that choice, the past is undone.
Today, we take the time to enter the quiet of our minds and make a choice not to listen to the voice of the ego. In the quiet, we feel the safety of our Father's love. Nothing can touch us here.
"You maker of a world that is not so, take rest and comfort in another world where peace abides. This world you bring with you to all the weary eyes and tired hearts that look on sin and beat its sad refrain. From you can come their rest. From you can rise a world they will rejoice to look upon, and where their hearts are glad. In you there is a vision that extends to all of them, and covers them in gentleness and light. And in this widening world of light the darkness that they thought was there is pushed away, until it is but distant shadows, far away, not long remembered as the sun shines them to nothingness. And all their 'evil' thoughts and 'sinful' hopes, their dreams of guilt and merciless revenge, and every wish to hurt and kill and die, will disappear before the sun you bring."
(T. 25.IV.3.1-7) (ACIM OE T.25.V.34)
The light of our Being brings peace to tired hearts. It is the truth in all of us. We are all the same. Here, in the stillness, we have the hope of the attainment of our goal.
"The stillness of today will give us hope that we have found the way, and travelled far along it to a wholly certain goal."
(W.286.2.1) We only have one goal in this classroom of life, which is to wake up from this dream and remember who we are. As Lesson 287 says,
"You are my goal, My Father. Only You."
Where would we go but to Heaven, and why would we substitute any other goal?
There is nothing we need to do because we are already the Christ. We are already perfection. Sure, we have forgotten our reality. We are convinced that we are less than perfect and that now we need to clean up our act to make ourselves holy. But this is not the truth. We experience our holiness when we let go of the noise of the ego. We just need to let go of our own thinking so we can hear the truth spoken to us by the Holy Spirit, Who is in our right minds. We are called to spend more time with God today in the silence of our hearts and in contemplation of the truth of what we are. The truth will dawn on our minds when we are ready, but it takes discipline and preparation. There is no need to put more pressure or expectations on ourselves. Everything is given perfectly and whatever happens is perfect for our awakening. There is no need for impatience. It is important to be as gentle with ourselves as Jesus is with us in our process while still maintaining rigor in watching our thoughts and continuing to do the practice.
When we keep listening to the raucous noise in our minds it is only because we don't want to know the truth.
"The memory of God comes to the quiet mind. It cannot come where there is conflict, for a mind at war against itself remembers not eternal gentleness."
(T.23.I.1.1) (ACIM OE T.23.II.7) That is the current state of our minds. The Holy Spirit speaks to us all day, but it is by our own decision whether we choose to listen. In the moments of stillness where we experience the peace and where the mind is at rest, we are given
"hope that we have found the way, and traveled far along it to a wholly certain goal."
(W.286.2.1) We are asked to trust in this process and trust in Him.
The question is, "Which voice will we listen to---The voice of attack and grievances or the Voice for love?" When we listen to the ego, it is because we don't want to release our anger and our grievances. We tell stories about why we are justified in our positions. We refuse to forgive.
"I have told you to think how many opportunities you have had to gladden yourself, and how many you have refused."
(T.5.IN.1.2) (ACIM OE T.5.I.1) Isn't that so? We know the way to choose happiness, but we prefer to hold onto grievances, which is simply a decision to hold onto suffering. In refusing to forgive, we are refusing our own happiness. We are choosing instead to keep our suffering, thinking that in doing so we will ensure that our brothers accept accountability for what they have seemingly done to us. But while we hold this position, we keep ourselves in hell.
A friend was recently sharing with me why his life was going so badly. Everything he said was a litany of problems in his relationship, issues with money, a boss that had it in for him, his lack of energy, why the Course wasn't working for him, and on and on. In that story, the evidence seemed so clear to him that the cause of his suffering was all outside of his mind. He was seeing himself as the victim of it all and refused to make room for the idea that maybe the cause was in his own mind and not in the world. Just maybe, it was the way he was interpreting the events of his life. Once the mind gets locked into its way of seeing, the ego stubbornly holds onto its version of events and there is no space made for another way. We have to start with simple acceptance that we may be wrong about the way we see every situation. We need to actively choose against our way of seeing and ask with sincerity and desire to be shown another way. It is the way of transformation, and it is a radical process. It is not about adding a spiritual dimension to our lives as they are now. We resist transformation because we still fear letting go of control over our own lives. As a friend recently reminded me, we really don't want to be the butterfly. We’d rather be the caterpillar with wings.
The lowest point in my life, after I had tried everything I knew to make my life better and none of it was working, was when I asked to be shown. It was then that the Course came to life for me. The message I was given was that my relationship would be transformed from specialness to holiness, but in the process, I could expect a lot of conflict as a result of the goal for the relationship being shifted from specialness to holiness. I had received the Course a few years prior, but it was at this point of desperation that I was ready to really embrace it and to commit to the practice. I now put my trust in the teachings and invested in making this a priority in my life.
"The goal of truth requires faith."
(T.17.VI.6.1) (ACIM OE T.17.VII.62) In spite of outward appearances and indeed the evidence of even more conflict, there was an inner knowing that this was the path for me. I chose peace over and over and kept my focus on the Lessons in deep trust. The result was a series of miraculous events that undeniably strengthened my commitment and dedication to this teaching.
"The power set in you in whom the Holy Spirit's goal has been established is so far beyond your little conception of the infinite that you have no idea how great the strength that goes with you."
(T.17.VII.7.1) (ACIM OE T.17.VIII.70)
The Lesson today is all about accepting the gift of the love so that the quietness of Heaven can be restored to God's beloved Son.
"The Voice of the Holy Spirit does not command, because It is incapable of arrogance. It does not demand, because It does not seek control. It does not overcome, because It does not attack. It merely reminds. It is compelling only because of what It reminds you
of
."
(T.5.II.7.1-5) (ACIM OE T.5.IV.24) That is the sweet, quiet, gentle, and patient love of the Holy Spirit that stands behind every problem we can perceive, waiting for our agreement to turn it all over to Him, but we need to want to do this more than we want the judgments and grievances.
Love and blessings, Sarah
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Allen Watson's
Workbook Commentaries
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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