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19 Yet is this magnitude beyond the scope of this curriculum. Nor is it necessary we dwell on anything that cannot be immediately grasped. There is a borderland of thought which stands between this world and Heaven. It is not a place, and when you reach it is apart from time. Here is the meeting-place where thoughts are brought together—where conflicting values meet and all illusions are laid down beside the truth where they are judged to be untrue. This borderland is just beyond the gate of Heaven. Here is every thought made pure and wholly simple. Here
is sin denied and everything that is received instead.
CHAPTER 26: THE TRANSITION
IV.
THE BORDERLAND
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Workbook for Students
Part II
What is the Christ?
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1 Christ is God's Son as He created Him. He is the Self we share, uniting us with one another and with God as well. He is the Thought Which still abides within the Mind That is His Source. He has not left His holy home nor lost the innocence in which He was created. He abides unchanged forever in the Mind of God.
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Workbook for Students
Lesson 278
If I am bound,
my Father is not free.
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1 If I accept that I am prisoner within a body in a world in which all things that seem to live appear to die, then is my Father prisoner with me. And this do I believe when I maintain the laws the world obeys must I obey—the frailties and the sins which I perceive are real and cannot be escaped. If I am bound in any way, I do not know my Father or my Self. And I am lost to all reality. For truth is free, and what is bound is not a part of truth.
2
Father, I ask for nothing but the truth. I have had many foolish thoughts about myself and my creation and have brought a dream of fear into my mind. Today I would not dream. I choose the way to You instead of madness and instead of fear. For truth is safe and only love is sure.
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Course in Miracles
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Chapter 26
The Transition
III. The Forms of Error
par 10-17
[TEXT READING PAUSED FOR WEEKEND]
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10 It is not difficult to understand the reasons why you do not ask the Holy Spirit to solve
all problems for you. He has not greater difficulty in resolving some than others. Every problem is the same to Him because each one is solved in just the
same respect and through the
same approach. The aspects which need solving do not change, whatever form the problem seems to take. A problem can appear in many forms, and it will do so while the problem lasts. It serves no purpose to attempt to solve it in a special form. It will recur and then recur again and yet again until it has been answered for all time and will not rise again in any form. And only then are you released from it.
11 The Holy Spirit offers you release from
every problem that you think you have. They are the same to Him because each one, regardless of the form it seems to take, is a demand that someone suffer loss and make a sacrifice that you might gain. And when the situation is worked out so no one loses, is the problem gone because it was an error in perception which now has been corrected. One mistake is not more difficult for Him to bring to truth than is another. For there
is but one mistake—the whole idea that loss is possible and could result in gain for anyone. If this were true, then God would be unfair, sin would be possible, attack be justified, and vengeance fair.
12 This one mistake in any form has
one correction. There
is no loss; to think there is, is a mistake. You
have no problems, though you think you have. And yet you could not think so if you saw them vanish one by one without regard to size, complexity, or place and time, or any attribute which you perceive that makes each one seem different from the rest. Think not the limits you impose on what you see can limit God in any way.
13 The miracle of justice can correct
all errors. Every problem
is an error. It does injustice to the Son of God and therefore is not true. The Holy Spirit does not evaluate injustices as great or small or more or less. They have no properties to Him. They are mistakes from which the Son of God is suffering, but needlessly. And so He takes the thorns and nails away. He does not pause to judge whether the hurt be large or little. He makes but one judgment—that to hurt God's Son
must be unfair and therefore is not so.
14 You who believe it safe to give but some mistakes to be corrected while you keep the others to yourself, remember this: justice is total. There is no such thing as partial justice. If the Son of God is guilty, then is he condemned, and he deserves no mercy from the God of justice. But ask not God to punish him because
you find him guilty and would have him die. God offers you the means to see his innocence. Would it be fair to punish him because you will not look at what is there to see? Each time you keep a problem for yourself to solve or judge that it is one which has no resolution, you have made it great and past the hope of healing. You deny the miracle of justice
can be fair.
15 If God is just, then can there be no problems that justice cannot solve. But you believe that some injustices are fair and good and necessary to preserve yourself. It is these problems that you think are great and cannot be resolved. For there are those you
want to suffer loss and no one whom you wish to be preserved from sacrifice entirely. Consider once again your special function.
One is given you to see in him his perfect sinlessness. And you will ask no sacrifice of him because you could not will he suffer loss. The miracle of justice you call forth will rest on you as surely as on him. Nor will the Holy Spirit be content until it is received by everyone. For what you give to Him
is everyone's, and by your giving it can He ensure that everyone receives it equally.
16 Think then how great your own release will be when you are willing to receive correction for all your problems. You will not keep one, for pain in any form you will not want. And you will see each little hurt resolved before the Holy Spirit's gentle sight. For all of them
are little in His sight and worth no more than just a tiny sigh before they disappear, to be forever undone and unremembered. What seemed once to be a special problem, a mistake without a remedy, or an affliction without a cure, has been transformed into a universal blessing. Sacrifice is gone. And in its place the love of God can be remembered and will shine away all memory of sacrifice and loss.
17 God cannot be remembered until justice is loved instead of feared. He cannot be unjust to anyone or anything because He knows that everything that is belongs to Him and will forever be as He created it. Nothing He loves but must be sinless and beyond attack. Your special function opens wide the door beyond which is the memory of His love kept perfectly intact and undefiled. And all you need to do is but to wish that Heaven be given you instead of hell, and every bolt and barrier that seems to hold the door securely barred and locked will merely fall away and disappear. For it is not your Father's Will that you should offer or receive less than He gave when He created you in perfect love.
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Course in Miracles
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Chapter 26
The Transition
IV. The Borderland
par 18-24
[TEXT READING PAUSED FOR WEEKEND]
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18 Complexity is not of God. How could it be, when all He knows is one? He knows of
one creation,
one reality,
one truth, and but
one Son. Nothing conflicts with oneness. How, then, could there be complexity in Him? What is there to decide? For it is conflict that makes choice possible. The truth is simple—it is one, without an opposite. And how could strife enter in its simple presence and bring complexity where oneness is? The truth makes no decisions, for there is nothing to decide
between. And only if there were could choosing be a necessary step in the advance toward oneness. What is everything leaves room for nothing else.
19 Yet is this magnitude beyond the scope of this curriculum. Nor is it necessary we dwell on anything that cannot be immediately grasped. There is a borderland of thought which stands between this world and Heaven. It is not a place, and when you reach it is apart from time. Here is the meeting-place where thoughts are brought together—where conflicting values meet and all illusions are laid down beside the truth where they are judged to be untrue. This borderland is just beyond the gate of Heaven. Here is every thought made pure and wholly simple. Here
is sin denied and everything that is received instead.
20 This is the journey's end. We have referred to it as the real world. And yet there is a contradiction here in that the words imply a limited reality, a partial truth, a segment of the universe made true. This is because knowledge makes no attack upon perception. They are brought together, and only one continues past the gate where Oneness is. Salvation is a borderland where place and time and choice have meaning still, and yet it can be seen that they are temporary, out of place, and every choice has been already made.
21 Nothing the Son of God believes can be destroyed. But what is truth to him must be brought to the last comparison that he will ever make, the last evaluation that will be possible, the final judgment upon this world. It is the judgment of the truth upon illusion, of knowledge on perception—it has no meaning and does not exist. This is not your decision. It is but a simple statement of a simple fact. But in this world, there
are no simple facts because what is the same and what is different remain unclear. The one essential thing to make a choice at all is this distinction. And herein lies the difference between the worlds. In this one, choice is made impossible. In the real world is choosing simplified.
22 Salvation stops just short of Heaven, for only perception needs salvation. Heaven was never lost and so cannot be saved. Yet who can make a choice between the wish for Heaven and the wish for hell unless he recognizes they are
not the same? This difference is the learning goal this course has set. It will not go beyond this aim. Its only purpose is to teach what is the same and what is different, leaving room to make the only choice which
can be made.
23 There is no basis for choice in this complex and over-complicated world. For no one understands what is the same and seems to choose where no choice really is. The real world is the area of choice made real, not in the outcome but in the perception of
alternatives for choice. That there
is choice is an illusion. Yet within this one lies the undoing of
every illusion, not excepting this.
24 Is not this like your special function, where the separation is undone by change of purpose in what once was specialness and now is union?
All illusions are but one. And in the recognition this is so lies the ability to give up all attempts to choose between them and to
make them different. [How simple is the choice between two things so clearly
unalike.] There
is no conflict here. No sacrifice is possible in the relinquishment of an illusion
recognized as such. Where all reality has been withdrawn from what was never true, can it be hard to give it up and choose what
must be true?
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Sarah's Reflections
Lesson 278
If I am bound,
my Father is not free.
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Sarah's Commentary:
In Chapter 30, we read the following, which relates to this Lesson:
"What cause have you for anger in a world that merely waits your blessing to be free? If you be prisoner, then God Himself could not be free. For what is done to him whom God so loves is done to God Himself. Think not He wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him. He would but keep your will forever and forever limitless. This world awaits the freedom you will give when you have recognized that you are free."
(T.30.II.4.1) (ACIM OE T.30.III.36-37)
We are not separate from God or from our brothers. We believe that we are imprisoned in our body and that our body is our reality. We think that it contains us and defines us. Jesus says that if this were really the case, God must be a prisoner with us and, just like us, will die. If God could be imprisoned, the
"frailties and the sins which I perceive are real, and cannot be escaped."
(W.278.1.2) In other words, if sin is real, we can never wake up from this dream of fear, which would be made real too. The dream of separation would be a fact instead of just an illusion.
The true power of our will is in our Oneness with God. We experience a reflection of this Oneness when we see that we are not different from each other. There is only mind. When I see separation and differences, I make the illusion real. I believe in the separation, and I no longer experience the love that I am. To love our brothers is to love God. To hate a brother is to hate a part of myself. I take the part that I am judging in myself and see it in my brother and then hate it and judge it there.
We limit ourselves by the laws we believe in. We are not asked to deny the belief in our bodily identity living in this world and obeying its laws. If we deny the body and the world, we are denying the power of the mind that made it all. What we are being asked to do is to investigate our thoughts so we can learn to see that we are only bound by our belief in them. Fear motivates us to invest in the laws we hold to be true. For example, look at how much fear there is around what we eat. All of the focus on organics, GMO's, pesticides, meat, sugar, food safety, and vitamins can become a religion, increasingly based on fear.
"And would you not have faith in what you have so diligently taught yourself to believe?"
(T.16.III.2.7) (ACIM OE T.16.IV.22)
"Are you really safer in maintaining the reality of illusions than you would be in joyously accepting truth for what it is, and giving thanks for it?"
(T.16.II.5.2) (ACIM OE T.16.III.15) We are dreaming this dream of fear and limiting ourselves by our investment in it and our belief in our bodily existence. In this way, we keep ourselves imprisoned to what is outside of the mind. We are not guilty because we believe in any of these laws, but we need to recognize that they keep us bound to certain beliefs about who we are and where our safety lies.
We now have a choice as to which voice to listen to. The ego is the choice for fear. We chose fear when we believed we had separated from love and left our home in Heaven. We continue to make this choice when we listen to the ego. We are not guilty of listening to the ego, and we are not required to suffer for this decision. Jesus simply urges us to see that we are making a mistake that can be corrected. We can choose the Correction, which we will be motivated to do when we see this is the Source of our happiness.
The simplicity of salvation is that there are only two choices.
"The Holy Spirit and the ego are the only choices open to you. God created one, and so you cannot eradicate it. You made the other, and so you can. Only what God creates is irreversible and unchangeable. What you made can always be changed because when you do not think like God, you are not really thinking at all. Delusional ideas are not real thoughts, although you can believe in them. But you are wrong."
(T.5.V.6.8-14) (ACIM OE T.5.VII.67)
Jesus reminds us,
"The truth in you remains as radiant as a star, as pure as light, as innocent as love itself. And you
are
worthy that your will be done!"
(T.31.VI.7.4) (ACIM OE T.31.VI.67) How beautiful is that? We have covered up this truth and its radiance with our false beliefs about ourselves, with our fear thoughts, with our false self-concepts, and with the laws we uphold. It is about seeing what we are thinking and believing, and bringing these beliefs to the light of truth, where they will dissipate. It is about staying vigilant of the thoughts we think apart from God and reminding ourselves that they are not the truth. All we are asked to recognize is what is false. Kirsten Buxton writes in her book,
I Married a Mystic,
that
the Holy Spirit told her she should put everything she sees into opposing categories—true or false, the real or the unreal. It is something we can practice throughout the day. He explains, "The body’s eyes may report differences in shape, size, and actions, so these are put in the false or unreal category. The experience of the present moment—seeing the Christ, feeling the connection of love between you and your brother—is put in the true or real category." Kirsten used the example of her cat, with its body, size, movements, and sounds as unreal but the enjoyment and bliss she felt in its presence as real.
When we say today,
"Father, I ask for nothing but the truth,"
(W.278.2.1) they are just words unless we truly mean them. How much do I want the truth? How strong is my desire for it? If we really wanted the truth, we would have it now because the Kingdom of God is here now. The dream of fear has become our reality as bodies living in this world. We have forgotten who we are and keep choosing to forget every time we turn to the ego. We have invited a stranger (the ego) in and adjusted to its insanity, but we are reminded that this stranger, who came without a purpose, cannot remain
"before the shining light the Holy Spirit offered and you accepted."
(T.20.III.7.3) (ACIM E T.20.IV.22)
We have agreed to choose a better way and to be set free with the help of the Holy Spirit. We do this step-by-step as the fear of being hurled into reality would be too overwhelming for us. We now choose truth instead of madness and love instead of fear with each decision we make. Truth is the only place of safety. This is the only place in our mind where we are totally secure, totally free of fear, and released from the belief in lack and needs. And it is from this place within us, where truth resides, that we can be taught what we are.
"This is a course in how to know yourself. You have taught what you are, but have not let what you are teach you."
(T.16.III.4.2) (ACIM OE T.16.IV.24) The truth is within. Turn to that truth daily. We do not need gurus; although teachers, who point us to the truth, are helpful.
"I sought for many things, and found despair."
(W.251.1.1) We think we wanted the things we sought for, but these things were all just substitutes for truth. We seek them until we recognize that they bring us nothing. Peace can only be found when dreams are gone. In this awareness, we are free, but we don't know it yet. Today we commit to bringing to awareness our false beliefs that keep us bound to this dream so we can be set free. We choose to take this course of action on behalf of our own happiness. It is how our suffering is released when we live in the flow of inspiration rather than the demands and requirements of the ego. It is not about adding spirituality to our ego, but rather undoing the false. It is not about trying to change ourselves to become a better person, but about undoing our identification with personhood through forgiveness and recognizing that we are only limitless mind, bound by nothing.
How do we do this? Jesus tells us,
"If you are willing to renounce the role of guardian of your thought system and open it to me, I will correct it very gently and lead you back to God."
(T.4.I.4.7) (ACIM OE T.4.II.11) We must first see that we are wrong about everything that we currently think, because only then will we be willing to give over the "I know mind" and be open to receive the truth.
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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