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63 The memory of God shines not alone. What is within your brother still contains all of creation, everything created and creating, born and unborn as yet, still in the future or apparently gone by. What is in him is changeless, and your changelessness is recognized in its acknowledgment. The holiness in you belongs to him. And by your seeing it in him, returns to you. All of the tribute you have given specialness belongs to him and thus returns to you. All of the love and care, the strong protection, the thought by day and night, the deep concern, the powerful conviction this is you belong to him. Nothing you gave to specialness but is his due. And nothing due him is not due to you.
CHAPTER 24: SPECIALNESS
AND SEPARATION
VIII. THE MEETING PLACE
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Workbook for Students
Part II
What is the Body?
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1 The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built to separate parts of his Self from other parts. It is within this fence, he thinks he lives, to die as it decays and crumbles. For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love. Identifying with his safety, he regards himself as what his safety is. How else could he be certain he remains within the body, keeping love outside?
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Workbook for Students
Lesson 266
My holy Self abides in you,
God's Son.
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1
Father, You gave me all Your Sons to be my saviors and my counselors in sight—the bearers of Your holy Voice to me. In them are You reflected, and in them does Christ look back upon me from my Self. Let not Your Son forget Your holy Name. Let not Your Son forget his holy Source. Let not Your Son forget Your Name is his.
2 This day we enter into paradise, calling upon God's Name and on our own, acknowledging our Self in each of us, united in the holy Love of God. How many saviors God has given us! How can we lose the way to Him, when He has filled the world with those who point to Him and given us the sight to look on them?
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Course in Miracles
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Text
Chapter 24
Specialness and Separation
VIII. The Meeting Place
par 62-72
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62 How bitterly does everyone tied to this world defend the specialness he wants to be the truth! His wish is law unto him, and he obeys. Nothing his specialness demands does he withhold. Nothing it needs does he deny to what he loves. And while it calls to him, he hears no other Voice. No effort is too great, no cost too much, no price too dear to save his specialness from the least slight, the tiniest attack, the whispered doubt, the hint of threat, or anything but deepest reverence. This is your son, beloved of you as you are to your Father. Yet it stands in place of your creations, who
are son to you, that you might
share the Fatherhood of God, not snatch it from Him. What is this son that you have made to be your strength? What is this child of earth on whom such love is lavished? What is this parody of God's creation that takes the place of yours? And where are
they, now that the host of God has found another son which he prefers to them?
63 The memory of God shines not alone. What is within your brother still contains all of creation, everything created and creating, born and unborn as yet, still in the future or apparently gone by. What is in him is changeless, and your changelessness is recognized in its acknowledgment. The holiness in you belongs to him. And by your seeing it in him, returns to you. All of the tribute you have given specialness belongs to him and thus returns to you. All of the love and care, the strong protection, the thought by day and night, the deep concern, the powerful conviction this is you belong to him. Nothing you gave to specialness but is his due. And nothing due him is not due to you.
64 How can you know your worth while specialness claims you instead? How can you fail to know it is in his holiness? Seek not to make your specialness the truth, for if it were, you would be lost indeed. Be thankful, rather, it is given you to see his holiness
because it is the truth. And what is true in him must be as true in you.
65 Ask yourself this: can
you protect the mind? The body, yes, a little—not from time, but temporarily. And much you think you save, you hurt. What would you save it
for? For in that choice lie both its health and harm. Save it for show, as bait to catch another fish, to house your specialness in better style or weave a frame of loveliness around your hate, and you condemn it to decay and death. And if you see this purpose in your brother's, such is your condemnation of your own. Weave, rather then, a frame of holiness around him that the truth may shine on him and give you safety from decay.
66 The Father keeps what He created safe. You cannot touch it with the false ideas you made because it was created not by you. Let not your foolish fancies frighten you. What is immortal cannot
be attacked; what is but temporal
has no effect. Only the purpose that you see in it has meaning, and if that is true, its safety rests secure. If not, it has no purpose and is means for nothing. Whatever is perceived as means for truth shares in its holiness and rests in light as safely as itself. Nor will that light go out when it is gone. Its holy purpose gave it immortality, setting another light in Heaven, where your creations recognize a gift from you, a sign that you have not forgotten them.
67 The test of everything on earth is simply this: "What is it
for?" The answer makes it what it is for you. It has no meaning of itself, yet you can give reality to it according to the purpose which you serve. Here you are but means, along with it. God is a Means as well as End. In Heaven, means and end are one, and one with Him. This is the state of true creation, found not within time, but in eternity. To no one here is this describable. Nor is there any way to learn what this condition means. Not till you go past learning to the Given; not till you make again a holy home for your creations is it understood.
68 A co-creator with the Father must have a Son. Yet must this Son have been created like Himself. A perfect being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to add and nothing taken from—not born of size nor weight nor time nor held to limits or uncertainties of any kind. Here do the means and end unite as one, nor does this one have any end at all. All this is true, and yet it has no meaning to anyone who still retains one unlearned lesson in his memory, one thought with purpose still uncertain, or one wish with a divided aim.
69 This course makes no attempt to teach what cannot easily be learned. Its scope does not exceed your own, except to say that what is yours will come to you when you are ready. Here are the means and purpose separate because they were so made and so perceived. And therefore do we deal with them as if they were. It is essential it be kept in mind that all perception still is upside down until its purpose has been understood. Perception does not
seem to be a means. And it is this that makes it hard to grasp the whole extent to which it must depend on what you see it
for. Perception seems to
teach you what you see. Yet it but witnesses to what
you taught. It is the outward picture of a wish—an image that you
wanted to be true.
70 Look at yourself, and you will see a body. Look at this body in a different light, and it looks different. And without a light, it seems that it is gone. Yet you are reassured that it is there because you still can feel it with your hands and hear it move. Here is an image that you want to be yourself. It is the means to make your wish come true. It gives the eyes with which you look on it, the hands that feel it, and the ears with which you listened to the sounds it makes. It
proves its own reality to you.
71 Thus is the body made a theory of yourself with no provisions made for evidence beyond itself and no escape within its sight. Its course is sure when seen through its own eyes. It grows and withers, flourishes and dies. And you cannot conceive of you apart from it. You brand it sinful, and you hate its acts, judging it evil. Yet your specialness whispers, "Here is my own beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." Thus does the "son" become the means to serve his "father's" purpose. Not identical, not even like, but still a means to offer to the "father" what he
wants. Such is the travesty on God's creation. For as His Son's creation gave
Him joy and witness to His love and shared His purpose, so does the body testify to the idea that made it and speak for its reality and truth.
72 And thus are two sons made, and both appear to walk this earth without a meeting-place and no encounter. One do you see outside yourself, your own beloved son. The other rests within, His Father's Son, within your brother as he is in you. Their difference does not lie in how they look, nor where they go, nor even what they do. They have a different
purpose. It is this that joins them to their like and separates each from all aspects with a different purpose. The Son of God retains His Father's Will. The son of man perceives an alien will and wishes it were so. And thus does his perception serve his wish by giving it appearances of truth. Yet can perception serve another goal. It is not bound to specialness but by your choice. And it
is given you to make a different choice and use perception for a different purpose. And what you see will serve that purpose well and
prove its own reality to you.
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Sarah's Reflections
Lesson 266
My holy Self abides in you,
God's Son.
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Sarah's Commentary:
What an amazing Lesson this is when we take in the deep message that is offered here! Jesus tells us that everyone who shows up on our path is not only a savior, but also a counselor and the
"bearers of Your holy Voice to me."
(W.266.1.1) Everyone! No exceptions. It certainly does not feel like that with those who seem to attack me and those whom I deem have betrayed me. Yet we learn that when we see a brother as hurting us, we are not seeing him correctly. Instead, what we are doing is seeing our own sins in him while claiming innocence for ourselves and seeing ourselves as victimized by him. Yet here, Jesus tells us that our brothers are all the bearers of God's holy Voice back to us. It reminds me of the passage that says,
"If
he
speaks not of Christ to you,
you
spoke not of Christ to him."
(T.11. V.18.6) (ACIM OE T.10.VI.58) If we don't see the Christ in our brother, it is because we choose to put our sins on him instead.
I love the passage in Chapter 19 where Jesus says,
"Think who your brother is, before you would condemn him. And offer thanks to God that he is holy, and has been given the gift of holiness for you. Join him in gladness, and remove all trace of guilt from his disturbed and tortured mind. Help him to lift the heavy burden of sin you laid upon him and he accepted as his own, and toss it lightly and with happy laughter away from him. Press it not like thorns against his brow, nor nail him to it, unredeemed and hopeless."
(T.19.IV.D
i
.16.2-6) (ACIM OE T.19.V.d.105)
Yes, I remind myself that the guy, who would not take my VISA over the phone, which then required a trip across town to pay for supplies my son needed in Vancouver, is actually my savior and yes, a counselor in my sight. This means that this brother has given me an opportunity to see who he really is---the Christ---if I am willing to release my judgments of him. This then is a gift to my own mind as I receive whatever it is I give. Our saviors are: The person who committed fraud with my investment; my sister who criticized me; the man who showed up on our doorstep, who was living in his car, broke, and looking for a spiritual group on his way to Vancouver; my young friend who called in the late evening from 60 km away, who needed to be picked up and taken to the hospital; my partner who shared the Lesson with me this morning; or a friend who showed up for ten days, sharing our space. These are all my saviors who bring gifts that help me heal my mind. They all provide a mirror for me of my inward condition that I see in each one. They all give me another opportunity to heal the specialness that I still hold onto. They all point the way to Heaven for me. It is a path of healing through our relationships.
Yes, I forget daily that everyone is here for my healing. When I am in my wrong mind, I think that people, who get in the way of my self-imposed goals, obstruct my path and are the cause of my distress. At times like this, I complain and see myself as unfairly treated and do not recognize that I have drawn all these events into my life. When I feel betrayed or imposed upon, it is because I want this. Why would we want it, you might ask? It is because we believe we have betrayed God and now we don't want to take responsibility for our own betrayal, and instead, we project it onto others and see them as the betrayers so we can pretend that we are innocent. We don’t want the responsibility of what we have done, so we want to be betrayed and see ourselves as victimized. Underneath our victim stories, we are actually, secretly happy to be hurt by others, as in our minds we are now off the hook with God.
There is another way to see people whom we think of as protagonists, standing in the way of our joy and peace. We can choose instead to see them as our saviors, showing us something of our unconscious beliefs about ourselves that we would not be able to see without them in our lives. They are given to us for this purpose as part of our own script made outside of this dream. Now, instead of seeing them as interfering with our path to God, we can see them as helping us on the way. Everyone is a symbol for what is going on in our own minds, including those whose shining radiance shows us that we share the same Self. I can see those I consider innocent, beautiful, and full of grace also as a symbol of what is in my mind, the same as those who I judge to be obstructive, resistant, difficult, and stubborn.
How we see anyone truly has nothing to do with them, but it is all about our own thoughts projected onto them. Our perceived sins obscure the light of Heaven in them and in us.
"The images I see reflect my thoughts."
(W.265.1.8) I am seeing only my thoughts everywhere and in everyone. I see thoughts of beauty and innocence reflected from my mind, or I see thoughts of destruction, conflict, and self-condemnation. All are in my mind because the fragmentation of the mind is reflected in a fragmented world. What I see everywhere I look is my own split mind. By seeing my projections, I have been given an opportunity, should I choose to use it, to release the obstacles to the truth of what I am and to also see the beauty and innocence already in my mind.
I am the one giving power to my thoughts. I am the decision maker, who can choose between the right mind and the wrong mind. When I recognize this, I bring awareness to the power I give these thoughts. When I judge anyone, I ask Jesus to help me see this person, this event, or this situation as he would see it. First, I take responsibility for my projections, bring them back to my mind, and remind myself that no one is doing anything to me. It is all by my own bidding. They are reading the lines I have written for them in my script. When I look inward and choose not to deny that they are all
my
interpretations that I have given neutral events, I ask the Holy Spirit how to see correctly. I realize that I am wrong in my interpretations of everything when I listen to the ego. When I choose to lose interest in what the ego has to say, I withdraw my investment in my own thoughts. I recognize that they are only hallucinations of the past based on my conditioned mind. We have deceived ourselves as to who we are.
This is the thought we are asked to hold in our mind today:
"My holy Self abides in you
,
God's Son."
(W.266) Everyone is me and I am everyone. We share the same ego and the same Self. We can only heal the guilt by reclaiming what we project onto our brothers. It is not helpful to judge ourselves for our projections. Judging ourselves keeps us bound and imprisoned in chains of guilt. By withdrawing our investment in maintaining the image of ourselves that we have created, we are instead reclaiming the truth of what we are in reality. Every single person on our path is helping us to wake up. They point the way home for us. When we see it this way, we can be grateful: to our parents, who did not love us as we thought they should; to our teachers who demeaned us; to our ministers, who affirmed our sin and guilt; to our partners, who betrayed us; and indeed, to everyone on our path. They are all there to help us in our healing, should we choose to see it that way.
Our relationships are the means this Course provides for us to find our way home. Our saviors are thus everywhere.
"How can we lose the way to Him, when He has filled the world with those who point to Him, and given us the sight to look on them?"
(W.266.2.3) In every encounter, we can find these saviors who point our way to Him. It is, therefore, impossible to lose the way to Him when we decide to truly apply these Lessons. God has not actually put these people on our path, as He does not know of this world, but in our own script, they are the saviors, who have agreed to take on these roles at some level. Everything changes when we start to emit our own frequencies, rather than absorb the frequencies of those around us. What this means for me is that we now choose forgiveness and allow the Holy Spirit to lead the way for us.
Yes, we can delay. We can procrastinate. We can rebel. We can project anger onto the world. We can see the cause of everything as outside our own minds, but when we know that this keeps us in hell, we will ultimately put away these
"sharp-edged children's toys."
(W.PII.Q4.What is Sin.5.2)
We are here to let go of the past, to let go of what our brother did
not
do to us, to let go of all thoughts of lack, all grievances, and all beliefs that there is something in the world that will provide us with love, security, and future happiness. We need not torture ourselves on the battleground of our own thoughts. We need not suffer any longer. Every decision we make is for the peace and joy of Heaven or the pain of hell. Our only confusion is confusion about what we are. It is about our identity. Asking the ego, "Who am I?" only brings more confusion. The ego can't know. The ego has made a false self. The question is whether we will accept the truth about us as what God says we are, or will we accept our own self-constructed image. Our saviors will help us to discover the truth and show us who we are as God's Son.
"In them are You
(God)
reflected, and in them does Christ look back upon me from my Self."
(W.266.1.2)
In other words, I will see my own reflection as the Christ Self when I see the Christ in my brothers. It is not an event, but a process. So, let us be gentle with ourselves. To say I want enlightenment now is to say there is something wrong with this moment and to demand that things be different than they are. Healing is to accept everything and everyone in my life now and to remember that there is nothing wrong. Everything is perfect for my awakening.
There is an interesting reference here to the Bible in the words,
"This day we enter into paradise."
(W.266.2.1) We join with our brother in the acknowledgment of the One Christ Self. The reference from the Bible is related to the two thieves on either side of Jesus at his crucifixion. One of the thieves taunted Jesus, but the other one said: "Lord, remember me when you come into the Kingdom." Jesus responded by saying, "This day we enter into paradise." The meaning, as related to this Lesson, is that the thief recognized the Christ in Jesus and thus knew himself as the Christ. This is the way we all enter paradise. When I see the Christ in my brothers, so too do I enter paradise.
Today, I am called to see the Christ in all my brothers by forgiving anything that stands in the way. Let anyone who comes to mind today, or who crosses my path, be seen as the gift he is in helping me to see my inner condition so I can see my projections and put them on the inner altar. I want to see who my brother really is, so I can know my Christ Self as One with him.
Love and blessings, Sarah
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Allen Watson's
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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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