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The Bridge is a
Transition in your
perspective of reality.
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“The bridge itself is nothing more than a transition in your perspective of reality. On this side, everything you see is grossly distorted and completely out of perspective. What is little and insignificant is magnified, and what is strong and powerful cut down to littleness. In the transition there is a period of confusion in which a sense of actual disorientation seems to occur. But fear it not, for it means nothing more than that you have been willing to let go your hold on the distorted frame of reference which seemed to hold your world together.
”
Par 62
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ACIM OE TEXT
CH 16 THE FORGIVENESS OF ILLUSIONS
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Workbook for Students
Part I
Introduction to Lessons 181-200
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1 Our next few lessons make a special point of firming up your willingness to make your weak commitment strong, your scattered goals blend into one intent. You are not asked for total dedication all the time, as yet. But you are asked to practice now in order to attain the sense of peace such unified commitment will bestow, if only intermittently. It is experiencing this which makes it sure that you will give your total willingness to following the way the course sets forth.
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Lesson ARCHIVE
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Workbook for Students
Part I
Lesson 186
Salvation of the world
depends on me.
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1 Here is the statement that will one day take all arrogance away from every mind. Here is the thought of true humility which holds no function as your own but that which has been given you. It offers your acceptance of a part assigned to you, without insisting on another role. It does not judge your proper role. It but acknowledges the Will of God is done on earth as well as Heaven. It unites all wills on earth in Heaven's plan to save the world, restoring it to Heaven's peace.
2 Let us not fight our function. We did not establish it. It is not our idea. The means are given us by which it will be perfectly accomplished. All that we are asked to do is to accept our part in genuine humility and not deny with self-deceiving arrogance that we are worthy. What is given us to do we have the strength to do. Our minds are suited perfectly to take the part assigned to us by One Who knows us well.
3 Today's idea may seem quite sobering until you see its meaning. All it says is that your Father still remembers you and offers you the perfect trust He holds in you who are His Son. It does not ask that you be different in any way from what you are. What could humility request but this? And what could arrogance deny but this? Today we will not shrink from our assignment on the specious grounds that modesty is outraged. It is pride that would deny the call of God Himself.
4 All false humility we lay aside today that we may listen to God's Voice reveal to us what He would have us do. We do not doubt our adequacy for the function He will offer us. We will be certain only that He knows our strengths, our wisdom, and our holiness. And if He deems us worthy, so we are. It is but arrogance that judges otherwise.
5 There is one way and only one to be released from the imprisonment your plan to prove the false is true has brought to you. Accept the plan you did not make instead. Judge not your value to it. If God's Voice assures you that salvation needs your part and that the whole depends on you, be sure that it is so. The arrogant must cling to words, afraid to go beyond them to experience which might affront their stance. Yet are the humble free to hear the Voice which tells them what they are and what to do.
6 Arrogance makes an image of yourself that is not real. It is this image which quails and retreats in terror as the Voice for God assures you that you have the strength, the wisdom, and the holiness to go beyond all images. You are not weak, as is the image of yourself. You are not ignorant and helpless. Sin can not tarnish the truth in you, and misery can come not near the holy home of God.
7 All this the Voice for God relates to you. And as He speaks, the image trembles and seeks to attack the threat it does not know, sensing its basis crumble. Let it go. Salvation of the world depends on you and not upon this little pile of dust. What can it tell the holy Son of God? Why need he be concerned with it at all?
8 And so we find our peace. We will accept the function God has given us, for all illusions rest upon the weird belief that we can make another for ourselves. Our self-made roles are shifting, and they seem to change from mourner to ecstatic bliss of loved and loving. We can laugh or weep and greet the day with welcome or with tears. Our very being seems to change as we experience a thousand shifts in mood, and our emotions raise us high indeed or dash us to the ground in hopelessness.
9 Is this the Son of God? Could He create such instability and call it Son? He Who is changeless shares His attributes with His creation. All the images His Son appears to make have no effect on what he is. They blow across his mind like windswept leaves that form a patterning an instant, break apart to group again, and scamper off. Or like mirages seen above a desert, rising from the dust.
10 These unsubstantial images will go and leave your mind unclouded and serene when you accept the function given you. The images you make give rise to but conflicting goals, impermanent and vague, uncertain and ambiguous. Who could be constant in his efforts or direct his energies and concentrated drive toward goals like these? The functions which the world esteems are so uncertain that they change ten times an hour at their most secure. What hope of gain can rest on goals like this?
11 In lovely contrast, certain as the sun's return each morning to dispel the night, your truly given function stands out clear and wholly unambiguous. There is no doubt of its validity. It comes from One Who knows no error. And His Voice is certain of its messages. They will not change nor be in conflict. All of them point to one goal, and one you can attain. Your plan may be impossible, but God's can never fail because He is its Source.
12 Do as His Voice directs. And if it asks a thing of you that seems impossible, remember Who it is that asks and who would make denial. Then consider this—which is more likely to be right? The Voice that speaks for the Creator of all things Who knows all things exactly as they are, or a distorted image of yourself, confused, bewildered, inconsistent and unsure of everything? Let not its voice direct you. Hear instead a certain Voice Which tells you of a function given you by your Creator, Who remembers you and urges that you now remember Him.
13 His gentle Voice is calling from the known to the unknowing. He would comfort you, although He knows no sorrow. He would make a restitution, though He is complete; a gift to you, although He knows that you have everything already. He has Thoughts which answer every need His Son perceives, although He sees them not. For Love must give, and what is given in His Name takes on the form most useful in a world of form.
14 These are the forms which never can deceive, although they come from Formlessness Itself. Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form, you can fulfil your function even here, although what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still. Salvation of the world depends on you who can forgive. Such is your function here.
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Lesson ARCHIVE
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Course in Miracles
Original Edition
TEXT
Chapter 16
The Forgiveness of Illusions
VII. The Bridge
to the Real World
Par 59-69
[READING PAUSED FOR WEEKEND]
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59 The search for the special relationship is the sign that you equate yourself with the ego and not with God. For the special relationship has value
only to the ego. To the ego
unless a relationship has special value, it has
no meaning, and it perceives
all love as special. Yet this
cannot be natural, for it is unlike the relationship of God and His Son, and all relationships that are unlike this one
must be unnatural. For God created love as He would have it be and gave it as it
is. Love has no meaning except as its Creator defined it by His Will. It is impossible to define it otherwise and
understand it.
60 Love is
freedom. To look for it by placing yourself in bondage is to
separate yourself from it. For the love of God, no longer seek for union in separation nor for freedom in bondage! As you release, so will you be released. Forget this not, or love will be unable to find you and comfort you. There is a way in which the Holy Spirit asks your help if you would have His. The holy instant is His most helpful tool in protecting you from the attraction of guilt, the real lure in the special relationship. You do not recognize that this
is its real appeal, for the ego has taught you that
freedom lies in it. Yet the closer you look at the special relationship, the more apparent it becomes that it
must foster guilt and therefore
must imprison.
61 The special relationship is totally without meaning without a body. And if you value it, you must
also value the body. And what you value, you
will keep. The special relationship is a device for limiting
your self to a body and for limiting your perception of others to
theirs. The Great Rays would establish the total
lack of value of the special relationship if they were seen. For in seeing them, the body would disappear because its
value would be lost. And so your whole investment in seeing it would be withdrawn from it. You see the world you
value.
62 On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies seeking to join each other in separate unions and to become one by losing. When
two individuals seek to become one, they are trying to
decrease their magnitude. Each would deny his power, for the
separate union excludes the universe. Far more is left outside than would be taken in. For God is left without and
nothing taken in. If
one such union were made in perfect faith, the universe
would enter into it. Yet the special relationship which the ego seeks does not include even one whole individual. For the ego wants but
part of him and sees
only this part and nothing else.
63 Across the bridge, it is so different! For a time the body is still seen but not exclusively, as it is seen here. For the little spark which holds the Great Rays within it is
also visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness. Once you have crossed the bridge, the value of the body is so diminished in your sight that you will see no need at all to magnify it. For you will realize that the only value which the body has is to enable you to bring your brothers to the bridge
with you and to be released
together there.
64 The bridge itself is nothing more than a transition in your perspective of reality. On this side, everything you see is grossly distorted and completely out of perspective. What is little and insignificant is magnified, and what is strong and powerful cut down to littleness. In the transition there is a period of confusion in which a sense of actual disorientation seems to occur. But fear it not, for it means nothing more than that you have been willing to let go your hold on the distorted frame of reference which seemed to hold your world together. This frame of reference is built around the special relationship.
Without this illusion, there can
be no meaning you would still seek here.
65 Fear not that you will be abruptly lifted up and hurled into reality. Time is kind, and if you use it
for reality, it will keep gentle pace with you in your transition. The urgency is only in dislodging your minds from their fixed position here. This will not leave you homeless and without a frame of reference. The period of disorientation which precedes the actual transition is far shorter than the time it took to fix your minds so firmly on illusions. Delay will hurt you now more than before only because you realize it
is delay and that escape from pain is really possible. Find hope and comfort rather than despair in this: You could no longer find even the
illusion of love in any special relationship here. For you are no longer wholly insane, and you would recognize the guilt of self-betrayal for what it
is.
66 Nothing you seek to strengthen in the special relationship is
really part of you. And you cannot keep part of the thought system which taught you it was real and understand the Thought that
really knows what you are. You
have allowed the Thought of your reality to enter your minds, and because you invited it, it
will abide with you. Your love for it will not allow you to betray yourself, and you could not enter into a relationship where it could not go with you, for you would not
be apart from it.
67 Be glad you have escaped the mockery of salvation which the ego offered you and look not back with longing on the travesty it made of your relationships. Now no one need suffer, for you have come too far to yield to the illusion of the beauty and holiness of guilt. Only the wholly insane could look on death and suffering, sickness and despair and see it thus. What guilt has wrought is ugly, fearful, and very dangerous. See no illusion of truth and beauty there. And be you thankful that there
is a place where truth and beauty wait for you. Go on to meet them gladly, and learn how much awaits you for the simple willingness to give up nothing
because it is nothing.
68 The new perspective you will gain from crossing over will be the understanding of where Heaven
is. From here it seems to be outside and across the bridge. Yet as you cross to join it, it will join with
you and become one with you. And you will think in glad astonishment that for all this you gave up
nothing! The joy of Heaven, which has no limit, is increased with each light that returns to take its rightful place within it. Wait no longer, for the love of God and
you. And may the holy instant speed you on the way, as it will surely do if you but let it come to you.
69 The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you. Whenever your thoughts wander to a special relationship which still attracts you, enter with Him into a holy instant and there let Him release you. He needs only your willingness to
share His perspective to give it to you completely. And your willingness need not be complete because
His is perfect. It is His task to atone for your unwillingness by His perfect faith, and it is His faith you share with Him there. Out of your recognition of your unwillingness for your release, His
perfect willingness is given you. Call upon Him, for Heaven is at His call. And
let Him call on Heaven
for you.
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Sarah's Reflections
Lesson 186
Salvation of the world
depends on me.
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Sarah's Commentary:
Clearly, to our minds, the idea that the
"Salvation of the world depends on me
" (W.186) sounds more than a little arrogant. Yet Jesus says that it is not a statement of arrogance at all. In fact,
"Here is the statement that will one day take all arrogance away from every mind
." (W.186.1.1) And this is because acceptance of the statement undoes the thought of separation. We believe that we have separated from God, but it is an arrogant belief that we are holding in the mind because it is not the truth. It is the belief that we have made ourselves and our bodies and that we are living in the world and in a state of separation from God. When we humbly accept that we have been wrong about all of this, we become willing to learn our true reality. We learn what we are in truth through the undoing of specialness. We can only know our holiness by forgiving our specialness. And by being willing to look honestly at our roles and concepts of who we think we are and bringing them to the light of truth, we come to know the Self we are. Each healed mind saves the world because God's Son is One and the world is saved as the separation that gave rise to it is undone.
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Love and blessings, Sarah
Please send gifts of gratitude for these Reflections via PayPal to
huemmert@shaw.ca
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Allen Watson's
Workbook Commentaries
Allen Watson
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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