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Even in time you cannot live apart from Him, for sleep is not death. What He created can sleep, but it
cannot die. Immortality is His Will for His Son and His Son's will for
himself.
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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 115
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1 For morning and evening review:
[99]
Salvation is my only function here.
2
My function here is to forgive the world for all the errors I have made. For thus am I released from them with all the world.
[100]
My part is essential to God's plan for salvation.
3
I am essential to the plan of God for the salvation of the world. For He gave me His plan that I might save the world.
4 On the hour:
5
Salvation is my only function here.
6 On the half hour:
7
My part is essential to God's plan for salvation.
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Lesson ARCHIVE
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Course in Miracles
Original Edition
Text
Chapter 10
God and the Ego
I. Introduction
par 1-2
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1 Either God or the ego is insane. If you will examine the evidence on both sides fairly, you will realize that this must be true. Neither God nor the ego proposes a partial thought system. Each is internally consistent, but they are diametrically opposed in all respects so that partial allegiance is impossible. Remember, too, that their results are as different as their foundations, and their fundamentally irreconcilable natures
cannot be reconciled by your vacillations. Nothing alive is fatherless, for life is creation. Therefore, your decision is always an answer to the question, "Who is my father?" And you will be faithful to the father you choose.
2 Yet what would you say to someone who really believed this question involves conflict? If
you made the ego, how can the ego have made you? The authority problem remains the only source of perceived conflict because the ego was made out of the wish of God's Son to father Him. The ego, then, is nothing more than a delusional system in which you made your own father. Make no mistake about this. It sounds insane when it is stated with perfect honesty, but the ego never looks upon what it does with perfect honesty. Yet that
is its insane premise, which is carefully hidden in the dark cornerstone of its thought system. And either the ego, which you made,
is your father, or its whole thought system will not stand.
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Chapter 10
God and the Ego
II. Projection Versus Extension
par 3-15
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3 You have made by projection, but God has created by extension. The cornerstone of God's creation is you, for His thought system is light. Remember the rays that are there unseen. The more you approach the center of His thought system, the clearer the light becomes. The closer you come to [the foundation of] the ego's thought system, the darker and more obscure becomes the way. Yet even the little spark in your mind is enough to lighten it. Bring this light fearlessly with you and hold it up to the foundation of the ego's thought system bravely. Be willing to judge it with perfect honesty. Open the dark cornerstone of terror on which it rests and bring it out into the light. There you will see that it rests on meaninglessness and that everything of which you have been afraid was based on nothing.
4 My brother, you are part of God and part of me. When you have at last looked at the ego's foundation without shrinking, you will also have looked upon
ours. I come to you from our Father to offer you everything again. Do not refuse it in order to keep a dark cornerstone hidden, for
its protection will not save you. I
give you the lamp and I will go
with you. You will not take this journey alone. I will lead you to your true Father, Who hath need of you as I have. Will you not answer the call of love with joy?
5 You have learned your need of healing. Would you bring anything else to the Sonship, recognizing your need of healing for yourself? For in this lies the beginning of knowledge, the foundation on which God will help you build again the thought system which you share with Him. Not one stone you place upon it but will be blessed by Him, for you will be restoring the holy dwelling place of His Son, where He wills His Son to be and where he is. In whatever part of the mind of God's Son you restore this reality, you restore it to yourself. For you dwell in the Mind of God with your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone.
6 To be alone is to be separated from infinity, but how can this be if infinity has no end? No one can be
beyond the limitless because what has no limits must be everywhere. There are no beginnings and no endings in God, Whose universe is Himself. Can you exclude yourself from the universe or from God, Who
is the universe? I and my Father are one with
you, for you are part of
us. Do you really believe that part of God can be missing or lost to Him?
7 If you were not part of God, His Will would not be unified. Is this conceivable? Can part of His Mind contain nothing? If your place in His Mind cannot be filled by anyone
except you, and your filling it
was your creation,
without you there would be an empty place in God's Mind. Extension cannot be blocked, and it
has no voids. It continues forever, however much it is denied. Your denial of its reality arrests it in time but
not in eternity. That is why your creations have not ceased to be extended and why so much is waiting for your return.
8 Waiting is possible
only in time, but time has no meaning. You who made delay can leave time behind simply by recognizing that neither beginnings nor endings were created by the Eternal, Who placed no limits on His creation nor upon those who create like Him. You do not know this simply because you have tried to limit what
He created, and so you believe that
all creation is limited. How, then, could you know your creations, having
denied infinity? The laws of the universe do not permit contradiction. What holds for God holds for
you. If you believe
you are absent from God, you
will believe that He is absent from
you.
9 Infinity is meaningless
without you, and
you are meaningless without God. There
is no end to God and His Son, for we
are the universe. God is not incomplete, and He is not childless. Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself. Do not deny Him His Son, for your unwillingness to accept His Fatherhood has denied you
yours. See His creations as
His Son, for yours were created in honor of Him. The universe of love does not stop because you do not see it, and your closed eyes have not lost the ability to see. Look upon the glory of His creation, and you will learn what God has
kept for you.
10 God has given you a place in His Mind which is yours forever. Yet you could keep it only by
giving it, as it was given
you. Could
you be alone there if it was given you because God did not will to be alone? God's Mind cannot
be lessened. It can
only be increased, and everything He creates has the function of creating. Love does not limit, and what it creates is not limited. To give without limit is God's Will for you because only this can bring you the joy which is His and which He wills to
share with you. Your love is as boundless as His because it
is His.
11 Could any part of God be
without His love and could any part of His love be contained? God is your heritage because His one gift is Himself. How can you give except like Him if you would know His gift to
you? Give, then, without limit and without end to learn how much
He has given
you. Your ability to
accept Him depends on your willingness to give as He gives. Your fatherhood and your Father
are one. God willed to create, and your will is His. It follows, then, that
you will to create since your will follows from His. And being an extension of His Will, yours must be the same.
12 Yet what you will you do not know. This is not strange when you realize that to deny is to "
not know." God's Will is that you are His Son. By denying this, you denied your
own will and therefore do
not know what it is. The reason you must ask what God's Will is in everything is merely because it
is yours. You do not know what it is, but the Holy Spirit remembers it
for you. Ask Him, therefore, what God's Will is for you, and He will tell you
yours. It cannot be too often repeated that you do
not know it. Whenever what the Holy Spirit tells you appears to be coercive, it is only because you do not
recognize your own will.
13 The projection of the ego makes it appear as if God's Will is
outside yourself and therefore
not yours. In this interpretation, it
is possible for God's Will and yours to conflict. God then may
seem to demand of you what you do not want to give and thus deprive you of what you want. Would God, who wants
only your will, be capable of this? Your will is His Life, which He has given to you. Even in time you cannot live apart from Him, for sleep is not death. What He created can sleep, but it
cannot die. Immortality is His Will for His Son and His Son's will for
himself. God's Son cannot will death for himself because His Father is Life and His Son is like Him. Creation is your will
because it is His.
14 You cannot be happy unless you do what you will truly, and you cannot change this because it is immutable. It is immutable by God's Will
and yours, for otherwise His Will would not have been extended. You are afraid to know God's Will because you believe it is
not yours. This belief is your whole sickness and your whole fear. Every symptom of sickness and fear arises here because this is the belief that makes you
want not to know. Believing this, you hide in darkness, denying that the light is in you.
15 You are asked to trust the Holy Spirit only because He speaks for
you. He is the Voice for God, but never forget that God did not will to be alone. He
shares His Will with you; He does not thrust it
upon you. Always remember that what He gives, He holds, so that nothing He gives can contradict Him. You who share His Life must share it to know it, for sharing
is knowing. Blessed are you who learn that to hear the Will of your Father is to know your
own. For it is
your will to be like Him, Whose Will it is that it be so. God's Will is that His Son be one, and united with Him in His Oneness. That is why healing is the beginning of the recognition that your will
is His.
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ACIM Edmonton
Sarah's Reflections
Lesson 115 ~ Review III
[Review Lessons 99-100]
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The focus of this Course is on forgiveness but not in the traditional way we think of forgiveness. It is, instead, as this first line says,
"My function here is to forgive the world for all the errors I have made
.
"
(W.115.(99).1.2) Thus, in Course-based forgiveness, I do not forgive you for your mistakes but only for my own. How can that be? We need to understand that when we thought we had separated from God, we brought with us a load of guilt, which we still carry. The ego offered us a plan on how we might avoid responsibility for the guilt and simply "off-load" it. The ego sold us on an arrangement where we would not need to carry this guilt, as it is overwhelming to us. The ego proposal was for us to project the guilt onto the world with the assurance that this is how we would get rid of it, but that makes others responsible for how we feel. The ego’s plan was for us to blame others for our condition, which meant we give power to the illusion to victimize us. With the projection of our guilt onto others, the ego convinced us that now the guilt would no longer be ours. What the ego does not tell us is that projecting our guilt is actually how we keep it, and not only that, we actually attract even more guilt if we follow its program.
Our minds are like a movie projector, so what we see in the world (on the screen) is like the projection of the film in a projector. Think of the film running through the projector as the guilt in your wrong mind. The light coming through the projector is coming from your right mind and shines pure and clean of any images. It is like the light of your pristine, innocent being. But when there is guilt in the mind, this light is now obscured by dark images. When these dark, shadowy images are projected onto the screen, we experience fear. But when they are cleared away, the pure light can once again come through the projector.
When we think about suicide bombers, murderers, politicians we love to hate, parents who have abused us, and all the many ways "others" seem to cause pain, anger, distress, frustration, revenge, and loss of peace, it is challenging to imagine that they are all innocent. Instead, there may be a desire to retaliate, to make right, and to avenge the hurts we see and experience. Yet it is only our own thoughts about any situation that create pain for us. We project these thoughts of guilt onto others, who have conveniently provided us with the perfect situation to unload our guilt and make them responsible for our misery. Now the ego tells us that they have the guilt while we are innocent. We hope that the God we fear is taking note of these evil-doers, so they will be appropriately punished, and we will be off the hook. Our hope is that He will see who the guilty ones are and accept our innocence. After all, we tell ourselves that we tried so hard in the face of all the attacks we have experienced.
"This sickly picture of yourself is carefully preserved by the ego, whose image it is and which it loves, and placed outside you in the world
.
"
(T.20.III.5.6) (ACIM OE T.20.IV.20)
It does seem that there are some situations and people that are more difficult and thus more challenging for us to release our anger and wish for revenge. The ego does not love us and urges us to keep this cycle of guilt going, even though this keeps us in hell. Jesus reminds us that there is no order of difficulty in the illusion. In other words, there are not some situations worse than others. I like to think of it as similar to my nighttime dreams. If someone robs me and burns down my house in my dream, has anything real happened? If they say an unkind word to me in my dream, would it be any different than my house being burned down? In the dream, it is all the same. It is all illusory. One problem is no bigger than another because neither of them is real. When we wake up, we can easily let it all go. That is what forgiveness does in this worldly dream. Any thought I hold that obscures the love in me from my awareness is painful and creates suffering.
Forgiveness is the only thing that breaks the cycle of sin, guilt, and fear. When we take responsibility for our murderous thoughts, our attacks, our hatred, and all emotions arising in us as a result of what we perceive "outside" ourselves, we take our first step in healing. When we hang onto grievances and see others as responsible for how we feel, we give all our power away. Forgiveness depends on understanding that nothing is happening outside of our own minds.
"It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition
.
"
(T.21.IN.1.5) (ACIM OE T.21.I.1) Yet we have made an adjustment to this world that we believe is real and solid.
"And to this world must you adjust as long as you believe this picture is outside, and has you at its mercy
.
"
(T.20.III.5.7) (ACIM OE T.20.IV.20) There is no world. Thus, forgiveness requires that we recognize we are forgiving nothing except our own interpretations.
Since there is just one mind and we all participate in this one mind, when we heal our thoughts, we are healing the world. The events that trigger our emotions and seem to cause us to lose our peace are precisely where our healing lies. We must look at our thoughts and emotions without judgment. See them for what they are---just thoughts. They have no power over us. For example, if I hate anyone whom I see as an enemy or wicked person and want him or her dead, I have an opportunity to look at the vengeance that is in
my
mind. As I release my judgments and my guilt, I can know peace.
This is what Jesus means by accepting the Atonement for myself. It is all about accepting the healing of my mind and opening to the miracle. To accept the Atonement is to accept the correction. We are not responsible for the error, but only for the correction. That is the only place where change can happen. This is how I learn about my true nature and know my true innocence. False innocence is what we try to achieve when we blame others for our loss of peace by seeing them as the guilty ones. We hope God sees how they are victimizing us and punishes them so we can get off scot-free! With true innocence, healing is extended through us to everyone. Rather than judging anyone for their misbehavior, we now see a call for love and understanding. It is our own inner call to recognize that there is nothing but love, no matter what it looks like.
"My function here is to forgive the world for all the errors I have made. For thus am I released from them with all the world
.
"
(W.115.(99).1.2-3) It is only my errors I need to have removed from my mind. I have simply diverted blame from myself to others. All that I need to forgive is what I am holding in my own wrong mind. This Lesson is giving us another opportunity to look at our needs, concerns, and problems as coming from our own minds. Since the cause is in the mind, so is the solution. We are responsible for our own happiness. We have the power within us to heal our judgments and release the blocks to love through forgiveness. We cannot do this if we judge ourselves for our errors. Look at your mistakes with non-judgment. Look with the loving presence of Jesus, who will never judge you but will support your journey of healing every step of the way.
Getting in touch with our own innocence is a beautiful gift that we all yearn for. Guilt is a heavy burden on our minds. The only way to release it is to recognize our errors by being vigilant in watching our minds. When we ever have forgiven anyone even partially, we recognize what a burden is lifted from the mind. It releases us from the chains that bind us to the person we have not forgiven. Our mood lightens, our joy bubbles up, peace is restored, and stress is released. It is a wonder we don't commit to forgiving all the time with such gifts that we receive.
We need to stay vigilant to opportunities presented to us to forgive. These come up when we stand in line at the grocery store and get impatient, when we watch the news and get angry at events we see, when we get cut off in traffic, when a telemarketer calls at dinner time, when our investments crash, when the coke machine keeps our money and the coke as well, when a friend is always late, when our children disappoint us, and on and on. That is the nature of this classroom we call our lives. We become happy learners when we use these opportunities for forgiveness. We get to the point where we even welcome them. This Lesson reminds us that we are forgiving someone for what they did not do precisely because nothing here is real. It is our dream that we are dreaming. It is all coming from our own minds.
Imagine, no matter what we think we are doing on this planet, no matter what we think our function is, whatever role we play, nurse, teacher, lawyer, student, parent, daughter, son, computer analyst, hairdresser -- none of these are reasons for why we are here. They are just the backdrop for healing the mind and recognizing our own power. We are only here to learn forgiveness, which is our only function. The world is a classroom for this learning and serves no other purpose.
Jesus tells us that when our unconscious guilt is brought to the light and healed, we will see a different world. It is the world that vision will reveal to us.
"When you perceive yourself without deceit, you will accept the real world in place of the false one you have made
.
"
(T.11. VIII.15.4) (ACIM OE T.10.VIII.90) When the guilt is released, the real world will be revealed.
Love and blessings, Sarah
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