Sarah's Commentary:
What is the word of God given me to speak today? It is this:
"My Son is pure and holy as Myself."
(W.276.1.2) That is what Jesus wants us to understand---we all share the Oneness of the Christ Self, have never separated from Oneness, and our reality is as pure and holy as God Himself. The word of God is a reflection of the Atonement Principle. It is the assurance that we could never separate from our Source. Jesus wants us to see that what we have made of ourselves is not the truth. We are as God created us in His image and with all His attributes. No matter what we think we have done, we simply cannot change the truth. Now we just have to learn to accept it.
"Let us accept His Fatherhood, and all is given us."
(W.276.1.5) To accept all that is given us is to accept the truth of the Christ Self that we are, the truth about our brothers, and the truth that God is our Father. We resist God's Will in the belief that His Will is not in our best interests. We fear that He will require us to sacrifice what we think we want and need for our happiness. This reflects not only our problem with authority, but our mistrust of God and of the love we are. Thus, we maintain control rather than surrender our ideas and trust in His Love for us.
This reminds me of the movie,
The Horse Whisperer
. The horse named Pilgrim has been crippled in a riding accident, as is the girl whose leg is badly injured and must be amputated. Robert Redford, as the Horse Whisperer, approaches these two with great patience, just as Jesus works with us when we don't trust that he only wants our own highest good. Booker (Redford) approaches both with a very gentle touch, recognizing the only way he will win their trust is with total love and acceptance. He is also dealing with the mother, who feels her safety lies in controlling everything, even though she herself, an alcoholic, is not in control of her own life. Pilgrim, the horse, finally succumbs to Booker, though it requires that he exert some gentle force in hobbling Pilgrim until he finally gives in. It is a reflection of our own stubborn egos and our resistance to giving in and surrendering. We dig in our heels and insist,
"I want it thus!"
(T.18.II.4.1) (ACIM OE T.18.III.17), which is the ego's mantra in life. We insist on being right about who we are rather than choosing happiness.
We think we are independent of God and have made ourselves what we are and continue to shape and mold our personalities. We prefer to live with our own crippling thoughts of unworthiness and self-attack rather than fall into the arms of Love. It seems insane, and it is. There is a familiarity and a comfort in staying with what we have always believed. Change frightens us because the first change we experienced was the separation. Yet Jesus reminds us that we were created as an extension of God’s Love, and we cannot make ourselves over into something we are not. Once we completely submit to this truth, we will have overcome our investment in our independence. It is a process of undoing and everything is given us to support this process. It can be painful to the ego, but always glorious to the spirit.
Independence is a conspiracy against our own best interests. In order to get away from painful emotions brought about by guilt, we learned to dissociate from them, pretending not to care. We try to maintain control instead and to have things our way so we won't be hurt again. We build a protective defense system around ourselves, both physically and psychologically. Now, we are afraid of true partnership and joining, where our vulnerabilities will be exposed. We no longer trust those whom we believe are the cause of our painful emotions. When we are willing to see that the pain comes from our own unhealed minds, we welcome the opportunity to look behind our defenses and to bring our issues forward for healing, which is the only way to remember who we are.
I remember how it was for me as a five-year-old, living in Sweden in a refugee camp, feeling the chaos of life around me, and feeling the lack of protection from the adults in my life. It seems I made a decision, at that point, that I would only rely on myself. It seemed to me there was no protection in this dangerous world. It was as if I made a decision to kick God off the throne and instead decided that I was now taking over and managing my life myself. It was a process of dissociation from the pain of sadness and rejection. My need for love and protection was lacking in my perception. When we dissociate, we pretend it does not matter. The pain and heartbreak do not get expressed, and thus there is no healing. The emotions get buried until circumstances contrive to bring them to our attention and we commit to doing the healing work. It was not until I recognized and acknowledged that I had chosen this whole story of victimhood at the hands of those seemingly uncaring adults that I could choose to start the process of forgiveness.
We all have our own version of our stories of victimization and thus justify our anger and attack and project the guilt. We feel guilty for having made ourselves, believing we are separate from God, all the while making others responsible for our condition.
"A concept of the self is made by you. It bears no likeness to yourself at all. It is an idol, made to take the place of your reality as Son of God."
(T.31.V.2.1-3) (ACIM OE T.31.V.44) The guilt we hold in the mind over having left the love we are is now projected out. We need those who have hurt us and betrayed us to be there so we can hold them responsible for our pain instead of ourselves. Thus, they are seen as the guilty ones whom we hope will be punished, while God will see us as the innocent victims we believe we are. Seeing others as guilty justifies our attacks on them in our minds.
You may notice that there is a kind of satisfaction in telling our stories of victimhood. It is the satisfaction of expressing revenge for what others have done to us. But notice, too, that none of these strategies get rid of the guilt in our minds. In fact, they do the opposite. They bring on more guilt because every time we attack, we feel guiltier. The ego's ploy is to keep the guilt intact in our minds while projecting it onto others.
"'I am the thing you made of me, and as you look on me, you stand condemned because of what I am'."
(T.31.V.5.3) (ACIM OE T.31.V.47) What is now required for our healing is to take responsibility for our own guilt rather than holding others responsible for our pain. We are able to see what we are holding in our wrong minds, against ourselves, by looking at what we are projecting and how we are holding others responsible for our lack of peace. Thus, projection can serve a very useful purpose in our healing as it allows us to see in our brother what is unhealed in ourselves, and thus he is our savior.
We are not what we have made of ourselves. We are not these bodies and personalities that we think we are. We are the Son of God, pure and holy. That is our true reality as the Christ. As we are told over and over again by Jesus---we are as God created us. The Atonement Principle assures us that we cannot and have not changed ourselves. We cannot separate from God. We can believe that we have separated and have forgotten the truth of our Being, but we cannot change it. It seems arrogant to accept the magnificence and the mightiness of the Self we are, yet Jesus says it is arrogant
not
to accept God's word about what we are. Do we really know better than God?
We are reliving the original
"tiny tick of time in which the first mistake was made."
(T.26.V.3.5) (ACIM OE T.26.VI.32) It is when we chose the ego; but now we can see the consequences of that choice, and we can choose again in each instant. Do we want to attack or do we want to forgive? Do we want to give our brother a gift of thorns or lilies? The choice is ours, and with each choice that we make for Heaven, we open more deeply to the truth of who we are. The truth has never left us and is waiting for our acknowledgment. The ball is in our court.
"Deny we were created in His Love and we deny our Self, to be unsure of Who we are, of Who our Father is, and for what purpose we have come."
(W.276.1.6) Isn't this how we feel? We feel uncertain of who we are and wonder what meaning there is to our existence, how we got here, and what our purpose is. The only reason for we have this uncertainty is because of our denial of our Creator, Who is the Author of our existence. We have not made ourselves. When we recognize how wrong we have been about everything, we can start on the path of asking to be taught. We now turn to the Holy Spirit, Who is in our right minds, and we ask for His help in how to respond to everyone in our lives. When we turn to the ego, we respond with anger and attack, justifying our behavior with the belief that those we attack caused our reactions. The Holy Spirit sees every attack as a call for love and understanding. Now we are called to hear beyond the words and listen to the heart of our brothers to hear their call for love and understanding. We are called to share that which we would learn. We are called to embrace everything coming to us, effortlessly, recognizing it is all there for our healing. This allows us to be in the flow of the Spirit.
My brothers were
"given me to cherish as my own, as I am loved and blessed and saved by You,"
my Father. (W.276.2.2) Today, we extend God's Word to everyone we meet or think about, and we make space, through forgiveness, for blessings of light and love to shine through us. The message we want to give everyone today is that they are not separate from us. We are the same. We have not changed ourselves, and we have never left God. We give this message to everyone in whatever form we are prompted to give it. Today, we watch our minds when we resist extending this message and inquire as to what we are choosing instead so it can be healed.
Love and blessings, Sarah
