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Every healing thought which you accept, either from your brother or in your own mind, teaches you that you are God's Son. In every hurtful thought you hold, wherever you perceive it, lies the denial of God's Fatherhood and your Sonship.
ACIM OE T10 III "The Willingness for Healing"
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Workbook for Students
Review III
Introduction
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1 Our third review begins today. We will review two of the last 20 ideas each day until we have reviewed them all. We will observe a special format for these practice periods which you are urged to follow as closely as you can. We understand, of course, that it may be impossible for you to undertake what is suggested here as optimal each day and every hour of the day.
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Workbook for Students
Lesson 118
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1 For morning and evening review:
[105]
God's peace and joy are mine.
2
Today I will accept God's peace and joy in glad exchange for all the substitutes which I have made for happiness and peace.
[106]
Let me be still and listen to the truth.
3
Let mine own feeble voice be still, and let me hear the mighty Voice of truth itself assure me that I am God's perfect Son.
4 On the hour:
5
God's peace and joy are mine.
6 On the half hour:
7
Let me be still and listen to the truth.
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Lesson ARCHIVE
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Course in Miracles
Original Edition
Text
Chapter 10
God and the Ego
III. The Willingness for Healing
par 16-22
[PAUSED FOR WEEKEND]
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16 If sickness is separation, the will to heal and be healed is the first step toward
recognizing what you truly want. Every attack is a step away from this, and every healing thought brings it closer. The Son of God
has both Father and Son because he
is both Father and Son. To unite having and being is only to unite your will with His, for He wills you Himself. And you will yourself to Him because, in your perfect understanding of Him, you
know there is but One Will. Yet when you attack any part of God and His Kingdom, your understanding is not perfect, and what you will is therefore lost to you.
17 Healing thus becomes a lesson in
understanding, and the more you practice it, the better teacher
and learner you become. If you have denied truth, what better witnesses to its reality could you have than those who have been healed by it? But be sure to count yourself among them, for in your willingness to join them is
your healing accomplished. Every miracle which you accomplish speaks to you of the Fatherhood of God. Every healing thought which you accept, either from your brother or in your own mind, teaches you that you are God's Son. In every hurtful thought you hold, wherever you perceive it, lies the denial of God's Fatherhood and your Sonship.
18 And denial is as total as love. You cannot deny part of yourself because the remainder will seem to be unintegrated and therefore without meaning. And being without meaning to you, you will not understand it. To deny meaning
must be to fail to understand. You can heal only yourself, for only God's Son
needs healing. He needs it because he does not understand himself and therefore knows not what he does. Having forgotten his will, he does not know what he wants.
19 Healing is a sign that he wants
to make whole. And this willingness opens his
own ears to the Voice of the Holy Spirit, whose message
is wholeness. He will enable you to go far beyond the healing
you would undertake, for beside your small willingness to make whole, He will lay His own
complete Will and make
yours whole. What can the Son of God
not accomplish with the Fatherhood of God in him? And yet the invitation must come from you, for you have surely learned that whom you invite as your guest
will abide with you.
20 The Holy Spirit cannot speak to an unwelcoming host because He will
not be heard. The Eternal Guest remains, but His Voice grows faint in alien company. He needs your protection, but only because your care is a sign that you
want Him. Think like Him ever so slightly, and the little spark becomes a blazing light that fills your mind so that He becomes your
only Guest. Whenever you ask the ego to enter, you lessen His welcome. He will remain, but
you have allied yourself
against Him. Whatever journey you choose to take, He will go with you, waiting. You can safely trust His patience, for He cannot leave a part of God. Yet you need far more than patience.
21 You will never rest until you know your function
and fulfill it, for only in this can your will and your Father's be wholly joined. To
have Him is to be
like Him, and He has given Himself to you. You who have God
must be as God, for
His function became
yours with His gift. Invite this knowledge back into your minds, and let nothing that will obscure it enter. The Guest whom God sent you will teach you how to do this if you but recognize the little spark and are willing to
let it grow. Your willingness need not be perfect, because His
is. If you will merely offer Him a little place, He will lighten it so much that you will gladly extend it. And by
this extending, you will begin to remember creation.
22 Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God? You will accept only whom
you invite. You are free to determine who shall be your guest and how long he shall remain with you. Yet this is not
real freedom, for it still depends on how you see it. The Holy Spirit is
there, although He cannot help you without your invitation, and the ego is nothing whether you invite it in or not. Real freedom depends on welcoming
reality, and of your guests, only He is real. Know, then, who abides with you merely by recognizing what is there
already and do not be satisfied with imaginary comforters, for the Comforter of God is in you.
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by CIMS SonShip Radio
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Course in Miracles
Original Edition
Text
Chapter 10
God and the Ego
IV. From Darkness to Light
par 23-30
[PAUSED FOR WEEKEND]
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23 When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself. Your Comforter will rest you, but
you cannot. You do not know
how, for if you did you could never have grown weary. Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in
any way, for that is not God's Will for His Son. Pain is not of Him, for He knows no attack and His peace surrounds you silently. God is very quiet, for there is no conflict in Him. Conflict is the root of all evil, for being blind, it does not see whom it attacks. Yet it
always attacks the Son of God, and the Son of God is
you.
24 God's Son is indeed in need of comfort, for he knows not what he does, believing his will is not his own. The Kingdom is his, and yet he wanders homelessly. At home in God, he is lonely, and amid all his brothers, he is friendless. Would God
let this be real if He did not will to be alone Himself? And if your will is His, it cannot be true of you
because it is not true of Him. Oh, my children, if you knew what God wills for you, your joy would be complete! And what He wills
has happened, for it was
always true.
25 When the light comes and you have said, "God's Will is mine," you will see such beauty that you will
know it is not of you. Out of your joy you will create beauty in His name, for
your joy could no more be contained than His. The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness, and your heart will be so filled with joy that it will leap into Heaven and into the Presence of God. I cannot tell you what this will be like, for your hearts are not ready. Yet I
can tell you and remind you often that what God wills for Himself He wills for
you, and what He wills for you
is yours.
26 The way is not hard, but it
is very different. Yours is the way of pain, of which God knows nothing.
That way is hard indeed and very lonely. Fear and grief are your guests, and they go with you and abide with you on the way. But the dark journey is not the way of God's Son. Walk in light, and do not see the dark companions, for they are not fit companions for the Son of God, who was created
of light and
in light. The Great Light always surrounds you and shines out
from you. How can you see the dark companions in a light such as this? If you see
them, it is only because you are
denying the light. But deny
them instead, for the light is here, and the way is clear.
27 God hides nothing from His Son, even though His Son would hide himself. Yet the Son of God cannot hide his glory, for God wills him to be glorious and gave him the light that shines in him. You will never lose your way, for God leads you. When you wander, you but undertake a journey which is not real. The dark companions, the dark way, are all illusions. Turn toward the light, for the little spark in you is part of a light so great that it can sweep you out of all darkness forever. For your Father
is your Creator, and you
are like Him.
28 The children of light cannot abide in darkness, for darkness is not in them. Do not be deceived by the dark comforters, and never let them enter the mind of God's Son, for they have no place in His temple. When you are tempted to deny Him, remember that there
are no other gods that you can place before Him, and accept His Will for you in peace. For you
cannot accept it otherwise.
29 Only God's Comforter
can comfort you. In the quiet of His temple, He waits to give you the peace that is yours.
Give His peace that you may enter the temple and find it waiting for you. But be holy in the Presence of God, or you will not know that you are there. For what is unlike God cannot enter His Mind because it was not His Thought and therefore does not belong to Him. And
your minds must be as pure as His if you would know what belongs to
you. Guard carefully His temple, for He Himself dwells there and abides in peace. You cannot enter God's Presence with the dark companions beside you, but you also cannot enter alone.
30
All your brothers must enter
with you, for until you have accepted them,
you cannot enter. For you cannot understand Wholeness unless
you are whole, and no part of the Son can be excluded if he would know the Wholeness of his Father. In your mind, you can accept the whole Sonship and bless it with the light your Father gave it. Then you will be worthy to dwell in the temple
with Him because it is
your will not to be alone. God blessed His Son forever. If you will bless him in time, you will
be in eternity. Time cannot separate you from God if you use it on
behalf of the eternal.
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ACIM Edmonton
Sarah's Reflections
Lesson 118 ~ Review III
[Review Lessons 105-106]
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We have made many substitutes to take the place of the happiness and peace given us by God in our creation. We are attached to what we have made and what we now value in place of what has been given us. It is not easy to let go of things outside ourselves that we are convinced are important to our happiness. This world was made as a substitute for God's love. We value our uniqueness and our specialness more than His love. What we have substituted in the place of His love ultimately leaves us feeling empty. We have God's gifts of peace and joy right now, at this very moment, yet we keep wanting more. The ego is always about more of everything.
"What way could give you more than everything, or offer less and still content the holy Son of God?"
(W.155.12.4) Our wholeness is dismissed, and we lose sight of our divine identity by our desire for substitutes. These are the things outside ourselves that we think we need in order to be happy. Yet when we get them, we realize that they still leave us feeling empty because they are not the real thing.
Jesus urges us,
"Seek not outside yourself. For it will fail, and you will weep each time an idol falls
.
"
(T.29.VII.1.1-2) (ACIM OE T.29.VIII.43) Idols are substitutes for love. The only way we can be content and truly know peace is by remembering the truth of our creation, and this is where we find our true happiness.
"Seek not outside yourself. For all your pain comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting where it must be found
.
"
(T.29.VII.1.6-7) (ACIM OE T.29.VIII.43)
We still don't totally believe that there is no happiness to be found in the things of this world. We still think we know where our happiness lies, and so we keep seeking for it in the substitutes we have decided are important to our well-being. It is not easy for us to give up our belief that there is something here that will fulfill us, and when we get it we will be happy. Thus, we place our happiness outside ourselves and keep seeking and seeking, hoping everything we want will eventually come to us, and then we will be in bliss. Jesus tells us,
"No one who comes here but must still have hope, some lingering illusion, or some dream that there is something outside of himself that will bring happiness and peace to him
.
"
(T.29.VII.2.1) (ACIM OE T.29.VIII.44) We came here for this experience, and we will do what we came to do. There is no need to feel guilty or bad that we still hold some hope for happiness in the world.
As long as the Son of God goes
". . .in search of something he cannot find, believing that he is what he is not,"
(T.29.VII.2.5)(ACIM OE T.29.VIII.44)
then,
"The lingering illusion will impel him to seek out a thousand idols, and to seek beyond them for a thousand more
.
"
(T.29.VII.3.1) (ACIM OE T.29.VIII.45) Isn't that what our lives are about and where all our attention goes? The relationships, the jobs, the houses, the careers, the material things, and the immaterial things like recognition, power, and pleasures, are all idols. We not only think our happiness lies in getting everything we want; but when our external world does not measure up to our expectations, it can throw us into feelings of sadness, anger, great despair, and depression. When we can accept that all events and circumstances are perfectly orchestrated opportunities to look at places in ourselves where healing is called for, we become happy learners. Then this world of separation can become an essential classroom for looking honestly at how we are using these idols to cover over what lies beneath.
When we have expectations of how things should go in the world and they don't go the way we had hoped, it puts us in a tailspin. When things we value are lost, stolen, or broken, we can get very upset and distraught. When things do not work out according to the plans we made, we can get depressed. Being right about the way things should go becomes much more important to us than acceptance of the perfection of everything that shows up for us.
"Whenever you attempt to reach a goal in which the body's betterment is cast as a major beneficiary, you try to bring about your death. For you believe that you can suffer lack, and lack is death
.
"
(T.29.VII.4.1-2) (ACIM OE T.29.VIII.46)
How do we let go of all we have substituted for the love we are? How do we connect with the peace and joy already in us? To do so does not mean we must give up our attachments to what we still value, for that would be sacrifice and sacrifice is not called for. We can continue to pursue what we think we want, but as we increasingly apply these Lessons to our lives, our goals and priorities change very naturally. They change because our thought system is changing. Behavior simply follows what we hold in our minds. We start to lose interest in what held our attention before. In other words, we increasingly see that our idols don't deliver anything that can satisfy our deep desire for contentment and peace. There is no real fulfillment in these pursuits.
We are not being coerced into giving up anything in the world that we still want. We will eventually see there is nothing of value here to be given up. All we are being asked to do is to look at our attachments and recognize our happiness is not in any of these things. There is a true source of happiness within and always available to us. As we release our wishes and demands through forgiveness, we begin to experience the internal peace and joy Jesus talks about. As we trust this process more and more, we recognize how much more satisfying and reliable it is than pursuing the shifting things of the world.
Eventually, we will let go of everything in the world we thought would bring us happiness and peace. It is generally a process, but for some, it has come in a moment. I think of Byron Katie or Eckhart Tolle, both of whom experienced an instant of awakening from this dream as a result of their state of deep despair from which came an instant of total surrender. At one time, I thought this was the end of the ego. I saw enlightenment as more of an event and the end of the journey. Now I have come to understand that the ego continues on, but eventually, it has little significance or power. It moves into the background of our lives.
When we determine, on our own, how things should be and what we need to make us happy, we are actually in agreement with the ego and relying on our own personal will. We are choosing to be in control. We plan and organize our day and determine what needs to happen in order for us to be happy. We think we know what is needed. We make lists. We dream dreams. We make plans. We hold expectations. And when things don't go according to our plan, we experience anger, anxiety, distress, and grievances. The voice of the ego appears to us as incessant, loud, raucous, and relentless. Jesus says that it is actually feeble because ultimately it carries no power of its own. Let us today be willing to question this feeble voice and bring its ramblings to the truth. It does not define us. What it does is block the mighty Voice for Truth that is constantly speaking of what we are. The mighty Voice has one message that assures us,
". . .I am God's perfect Son
.
"
(W.118.(106).2.2)
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 “
A Workbook Companion: Vol I and II
.”
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