Lesson 328: I choose the second place to gain the first.
Lesson 328: I choose the second place to gain the first.
What seems to be the second place is first, for all things we perceive are
upside down until we listen to the Voice for God. It seems that we will gain
autonomy but by our striving to be separate, and that our independence from the
rest of God's creation is the way in which salvation is obtained. Yet all we
find is sickness, suffering and loss and death. This is not what our Father
wills for us, nor is there any second to His Will. To join with His is but to
find our own. And since our will is His, it is to Him that we must go to
recognize our will.
There is no will but Yours. And I am glad that nothing I imagine contradicts
what You would have me be. It is Your Will that I be wholly safe, eternally at
peace. And happily I share that Will which You, my Father, gave as part of me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This (below) is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries on this lesson from his book
set called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be
purchased at the following site: ~ M. Street.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lesson 328: "I choose the second place to gain the first."
*This thought comes from the famous biblical statement that the last shall be
first and the first shall be last (Matthew 19:30;20:16a), and pertains to the
bedrock of the ego thought system: <one or the other> -- God is second because
the ego is first. This would obviously mean that God is no longer God, and so
has been destroyed. However, we can recognize our mistake and realize we are
much better off in second place. Once we accept this -- "God is the Cause and I
am the Effect" -- we are automatically in the first place, because <there is
only one place>. Thus Jesus says in the text, referring to the Trinity: God is
first, but there is no second (T-14.IV.1:7-8), because only perfect Oneness is
real. In truth, then, there is not a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Heaven --
only perfect Love. Moreover, the instant we choose the second place -- letting
go of the ego and choosing Jesus as our teacher -- we realize there is only the
unity of Father and Son -- no competition, no battleground, no one <and> two.
Only One.*
(1:1) "What seems to be the second place is first, for all things we perceive
are upside down until we listen to the Voice for God."
*If I say I am second, someone else must be first. For example, no sports team
wants to finish second, for that means another team won -- the upside-down
perception of the world. To the Holy Spirit, however, when you are second you
automatically become first, because, again, there is only one. Thus when you
learn that God is your Cause and not the ego, the memory of God and His Oneness
returns. *
(1:2) "It seems that we will gain autonomy but by our striving to be separate,
and that our independence from the rest of God's creation is the way in which
salvation is obtained."
*In capsule form, again, we see what we have done to God and what we believe we
have done in the world, reflecting the ego's principle of <one or the other>. By
striving to be separate we are on our own -- autonomous and free, but at a price
that God must pay with His life. Since this principle established our identity,
we carry it into our dream. Consequently, we need to be independent of everyone
else -- it is <we or they>. The ego thus cautions us to be on our guard, lest
others take back what we believe we took from them. This, then, is the essence
of the special love and hate relationships: others are perceived as having what
we lack and want, and we must get it from them, otherwise we cannot survive.*
(1:3-6) "Yet all we find is sickness, suffering and loss and death. This is not
what our Father wills for us, nor is there any second to His Will. To join with
His is but to find our own. And since our will is His, it is to Him that we must
go to recognize our will."
*Jesus wants us to recognize these are the effects of choosing to be number one,
the unhappy results of the specialness that might make us right, but never happy
(T-29.VII.1:9). When we choose to be in second place, we are in God's living
Oneness where our will is one with His. To the ego this means we are second
best, but our right minds tell us this is truth's reflection.*
(2) "There is no will but Yours. And I am glad that nothing I imagine
contradicts what You would have me be. It is Your Will that I be wholly safe,
eternally at peace. And happily I share that Will which You, my Father, gave as
part of me."
*In other words, we made up the dream of our lives, and are grateful it had no
effect on reality.*
Love and Blessings,
Lyn Johnson 719-369-1822
|
Lesson 327. I need but call and You will answer me.
Lesson 327. I need but call and You will answer me.
I am not asked to take salvation on the basis of an unsupported faith. For God
has promised He will hear my call, and answer me Himself. Let me but learn from
my experience that this is true, and faith in Him must surely come to me. This
is the faith that will endure, and take me farther and still farther on the road
that leads to Him. For thus I will be sure that He has not abandoned me and
loves me still, awaiting but my call to give me all the help I need to come to
Him.
Father, I thank You that Your promises will never fail in my experience, if I
but test them out. Let me attempt therefore to try them, and to judge them not.
Your Word is one with You. You give the means whereby conviction comes, and
surety of Your abiding Love is gained at last.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Below, is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries on this lesson, from "Journey
Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be purchased at the
following site: ~ M. Street
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lesson 327. "I need but call and You will answer me."
*We call and God answers us, because His Answer is already present in our minds.
We wandered away and chose the ego's answer instead. Calling on God now is to
realize our mistake, and so we return to the decision-making part of our minds
and choose correctly. God automatically answers because we have placed ourselves
in the presence of His Answer.*
(1:1-4) "I am not asked to take salvation on the basis of an unsupported faith.
For God has promised He will hear my call, and answer me Himself. Let me but
learn from my experience that this is true, and faith in Him must surely come to
me. This is the faith that will endure, and take me farther and still farther on
the road that leads to Him."
*Jesus is telling us here as we will see in the prayer below, that this is
something we need to practice. Our experience that God's Love replaces the ego's
hate will teach us that everything in A Course in Miracles is true, but until
this experience is chosen there will remain a part of us that will doubt what it
says. It is only when we put the ideas into practice -- realizing that hatred,
judgment, and depression were simply mistaken choices -- that we realize: Yes,
all this is true, and I choose to follow the road that takes me home.*
(1:5) "For thus I will be sure that He has not abandoned me and loves me still,
awaiting but my call to give me all the help I need to come to Him."
*Because I believe I abandoned God, I believe He has abandoned me, a mistake His
Voice corrects in this inspiring close to The Song of Prayer:
"Do not abandon Love. Remember this; whatever you may think about yourself,
whatever you may think about the world, your Father needs you and will call to
you until you come to Him in peace at last." (S-3.IV.10:6-7) *
(2:1) "Father, I thank You that Your promises will never fail in my experience,
if I but test them out."
*Jesus is saying: "You have given the ego many chances and it has failed you
miserably. Please give me a try. Test out what I am saying, and see how much
better you feel when you let go of judgments. Recall my words:
"You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from
meeting yourself and your brothers totally without judgment." (T.3.VI.3.1).
Try it. You can always retain judgment if you want. First, however, test these
thoughts and you will see how much better you feel without your specialness.*
(2:2-4) "Let me attempt therefore to try them, and to judge them not. Your Word
is one with You. You give the means whereby conviction comes, and surety of Your
abiding Love is gained at last."
*This means we will at least temporarily accept God's promises, without judging
them. Again, we can always return to the ego if we wish. Yet the fact we have
failed so miserably on our own, and have been so unhappy throughout our lives
should demonstrate that our thought system does not work. *
Love and Blessings,
Lyn Johnson 719-369-1822
|
Lesson 326. I am forever an Effect of God.
Lesson 326. I am forever an Effect of God.
Father, I was created in Your Mind, a holy Thought that never left its home. I
am forever Your Effect, and You forever and forever are my Cause. As You created
me I have remained. Where You established me I still abide. And all Your
attributes abide in me, because it is Your Will to have a Son so like his Cause
that Cause and Its Effect are indistinguishable. Let me know that I am an Effect
of God, and so I have the power to create like You. And as it is in Heaven, so
on earth. Your plan I follow here, and at the end I know that You will gather
Your effects into the tranquil Heaven of Your Love, where earth will vanish, and
all separate thoughts unite in glory as the Son of God.
Let us today behold earth disappear, at first transformed, and then, forgiven,
fade entirely into God's holy Will.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Below, is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries on this lesson, from "Journey
Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be purchased at the
following site: ~ M. Street
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lesson 326. "I am forever an Effect of God."
*This lesson is also important in establishing Who we are as the Effect of God's
Love. It restates the Atonement principle that nothing has changed -- none of
our sad or sinful dreams has changed the fact that we remain at one with our
Source.*
(1:1-5) "Father, I was created in Your Mind, a holy Thought that never left its
home. I am forever Your Effect, and You forever and forever are my Cause. As You
created me I have remained. Where You established me I still abide. And all Your
attributes abide in me, because it is Your Will to have a Son so like his Cause
that Cause and Its Effect are indistinguishable."
*We have never left our Father's Mind, because <ideas leave not their source>.
We recognize that the ego's thought system was a mistake, and thus choose to
remember the Thought that created us and which shares it attributes of
changelessness, formlessness, love, and eternal life:
"Now is the Son of God at last aware of present Cause and Its benign
effects. ... His Cause is Its effects. There never was a cause beside it that
could generate a different past or future. Its effects are changelessly eternal,
beyond fear, and past the world of sin entirely." (T-28.I.14.1,5-7)*
(1:6-7) "Let me know that I am an Effect of God, and so I have the power to
create like You. And as it is in Heaven, so on earth."
*In Heaven, God extends His Love -- the meaning of creation -- establishing us
as His Son. He is thus our Cause and we His Effect, creating as He created --
the circle of creation:
"Thus, the Son gives Fatherhood to his Creator, and receives the gift that
he has given Him. It is because he is God's Son that he must also be a father,
who creates as God created him. The circle of creation has no end. ... in itself
it holds the universe of all creation, without beginning and without an end."
(T-28.II.1.4-6,8)*
(1:8) "Your plan I follow here, and at the end I know that You will gather Your
effects into the tranquil Heaven of Your Love, where earth will vanish, and all
separate thoughts unite in glory as the Son of God."
*Again, God does not literally have a plan, which is really the Holy Spirit's
Atonement, reflecting His Love. Still an illusion, yet does the Atonement not
oppose the truth, as other illusions do. At the journey's end, God gathers His
Effects in the last step that follows the Second Coming and Last Judgment. In
other words, the separated Sons rejoin as one, as God lifts him unto Himself,
reuniting the Son with the Source He never left.*
(2) "Let us today behold earth disappear, at first transformed, and then,
forgiven, fade entirely into God's holy Will."
*This is the process: We remain in the world, but look differently -- forgiving
it and ourselves -- and then all disappears as the Will of God ascends in the
Son's healed and holy mind. And he is home, where God would have him be.
(T-31.VIII.12:8).*
Love and Blessings,
Lyn Johnson 719-369-1822
|
Lesson 325. All things I think I see reflect ideas.
Lesson 325. All things I think I see reflect ideas.
This is salvation's keynote: What I see reflects a process in my mind, which
starts with my idea of what I want. From there, the mind makes up an image of
the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These
images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as
one's own. From insane wishes comes an insane world. From judgment comes a world
condemned. And from forgiving thoughts a gentle world comes forth, with mercy
for the holy Son of God, to offer him a kindly home where he can rest a while
before he journeys on, and help his brothers walk ahead with him, and find the
way to Heaven and to God.
Our Father, Your ideas reflect the truth, and mine apart from Yours but make up
dreams. Let me behold what only Yours reflect, for Yours and Yours alone
establish truth.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Below, is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries on this lesson, from "Journey
Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be purchased at the
following site: ~ M. Street.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lesson 325. "All things I think I see reflect ideas."
*Its strong theoretical basis makes this lesson unique to Part II. It recalls
the early lessons, where Jesus teaches that everything comes from thought: "All
things I think I see reflects ideas." What we perceive outside comes from a
thought within. If we perceive anger, loss, or sin, we but see a shadow of the
separation thought we made real in our minds. Similarly, if we perceive only
love or calls for love, we see a reflection of the Atonement we chose for our
truth within the dream.*
(1:1-2) "This is salvation's keynote: What I see reflects a process in my mind,
which starts with my idea of what I want. From there, the mind makes up an image
of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find."
*Do we want the ego's individuality or the Holy Spirit's Atonement? Do we want
to remain in our dream of specialness or to awaken and return home? Our wrong
mind seeks and finds sin, because this proves the ego's separate existence is
real.*
(1:3-5) "These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real
and guarded as one's own. From insane wishes comes an insane world. From
judgment comes a world condemned."
*Listening to the ego, we look around and see sin throughout the world, but not
in ourselves. Even if we were able to see sin within, we would be quick to
attribute it to someone else's sin, beginning with our parents. We seek to find
sin because, again, it means our separation from God is real, and thus are our
individual identities real as well. Seeing sin in everyone else allows us to
escape responsibility for it. On the other hand, when we realize we made a
mistake and there must be another way, we choose the Holy Spirit's forgiveness
and perceive a totally different world, as we now read:*
(1:6) "And from forgiving thoughts a gentle world comes forth, with mercy for
the holy Son of God, to offer him a kindly home where he can rest a while before
he journeys on, and help his brothers walk ahead with him, and find the way to
Heaven and to God."
*When we have forgiven totally, the "gentle world" turns into the real world.
All we need do to recognize which choice we made is pay attention to our
thoughts about others. The world's value is that it reflects our choices back to
us. We initially chose wrongly, but once recognized, we can ask our Teacher to
reinterpret our perceptions, helping us to choose again. Thus we need to be
especially vigilant of what we are seeing in others and ourselves. Another's
body is no more real than our own, and therefore what we project onto another's
is what we project onto ours. Again, becoming aware of our judgments and attack
thoughts helps us realize our mistake, so we can return to its choice in the
mind and correct it.*
(2) "Our Father, Your ideas reflect the truth, and mine apart from Yours but
make up dreams. Let me behold what only Yours reflect, for Yours and Yours alone
establish truth."
*The reflection of God's ideas is the real world. We need to recognize our
investment in our individual self will not make us happy, for it is but an empty
dream. Such realization allows the happy dream to replace the unhappy one,
ushering in the real world of truth's reflection.*
Love and Blessings,
Lyn Johnson 719-369-1822
|
Lesson 324. I merely follow, for I would not lead.
Lesson 324. I merely follow, for I would not lead.
(1) Father, You are the One Who gave the plan for my salvation to me. You have set the way I am to go, the role to take, and every step in my appointed path. I cannot lose the way. I can but choose to wander off a while, and then return. Your loving Voice will always call me back, and guide my feet aright. My brothers all can follow in the way I lead them. Yet I merely follow in the way to You, as You direct me and would have me go.
(2) So let us follow One Who knows the way. We need not tarry, and we cannot stray except an instant from His loving Hand. We walk together, for we follow Him. And it is He Who makes the ending sure, and guarantees a safe returning home.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Below, is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries on this lesson, from "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be purchased at the following site: ~ M. Street.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lesson 324. "I merely follow, for I would not lead."
This is the second appearance of this thought, and it will re-appear again shortly. Lesson 317 stated, "I follow in the way appointed me," and we shall soon see Lesson 328, "I choose the second place to gain the first." All three lessons present the same teaching -- our gratitude for not being in charge; for being second and not first. In other words, we are grateful we are the creation of God, not the Creator; the effect, not the Cause. The ego obviously wants to be number one, which means it has to push God off the throne of creation. Usurping God's role, the ego is left alone to proclaim itself as the Deity:
"God's creations are given their true Authorship, but you prefer to be anonymous when you choose to separate yourself from your Author. Being uncertain of your true Authorship, you believe that your creation was anonymous. This leaves you in a position where it sounds meaningful to believe that you created yourself." (T-3.VI.8:7-9)
At this point, then, there is nothing left but to follow the ego, until the pain becomes too great and we finally accept the fact we were mistaken. Moreover, we gladly realize there is Someone Whom we can now follow along the gentle path of forgiveness.
(1:1-4) "Father, You are the One Who gave the plan for my salvation to me. You have set the way I am to go, the role to take, and every step in my appointed path. I cannot lose the way. I can but choose to wander off a while, and then return."
This is our mistake, right at the beginning. Jesus says we can choose to wander off "a while," because from where he is -- outside time and space -- a billion years is nothing. As he says of God and Christ: "What is a hundred or a thousand years to Them, or tens of thousands?" (T-26.IX.4:1).
(1:5-7) "Your loving Voice will always call me back, and guide my feet aright. My brothers all can follow in the way I lead them. Yet I merely follow in the way to You, as You direct me and would have me go."
We saw this idea expressed in Lesson 155, "I will step back and let Him lead the way." Truth is ahead of us, calling us out of the dream. As we follow truth's call, its memory in our minds calls to others through our peace, love, and kindness. Jesus makes the same point of the psychotherapist:
"The psychotherapist is a leader in the sense that he walks slightly ahead of the patient, and helps him to avoid a few of the pitfalls along the road by seeing them first. Ideally, he is also a follower, for One should walk ahead of him to give him light to see." (P-2.III.1:1-2)*
(2) "So let us follow One Who knows the way. We need not tarry, and we cannot stray except an instant from His loving Hand. We walk together, for we follow Him. And it is He Who makes the ending sure, and guarantees a safe returning home."
Thus we walk with Jesus, along with all our brothers. The ego does not know the way, and to follow it <is> to walk alone, because its theme song is <one or the other>. Following the Holy Spirit, however, we walk with everyone, for we <are> everyone. The popular and inspiring song from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel says it all -- "You'll Never Walk Alone."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
11. What is Creation?
(1) Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit. Only love creates, and only like itself. There was no time when all that it created was not there. Nor will there be a time when anything that it created suffers any loss. Forever and forever are God's Thoughts exactly as they were and as they are, unchanged through time and after time is done.
(2) God's Thoughts are given all the power that their own Creator has. For He would add to love by its extension. Thus His Son shares in creation, and must therefore share in power to create. What God has willed to be forever One will still be One when time is over; and will not be changed throughout the course of time, remaining as it was before the thought of time began.
(3) Creation is the opposite of all illusions, for creation is the truth. Creation is the holy Son of God, for in creation is His Will complete in every aspect, making every part container of the whole. Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate; forever held within His holy Will, beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection and of any spot upon its sinlessness.
(4) We are creation; we the Sons of God. We seem to be discrete, and unaware of our eternal unity with Him. Yet back of all our doubts, past all our fears, there still is certainty. For love remains with all its Thoughts, its sureness being theirs. God's memory is in our holy minds, which know their oneness and their unity with their Creator. Let our function be only to let this memory return, only to let God's Will be done on earth, only to be restored to sanity, and to be but as God created us.
(5) Our Father calls to us. We hear His Voice, and we forgive creation in the Name of its Creator, Holiness Itself, Whose Holiness His Own creation shares; Whose Holiness is still a part of us.
Love and Blessings,
Lyn Johnson 719-369-1822
|
Lesson 323. I gladly make the "sacrifice" of fear.
Lesson 323. I gladly make the "sacrifice" of fear.
Here is the only "sacrifice" You ask of Your beloved Son; You ask him to give up
all suffering, all sense of loss and sadness, all anxiety and doubt, and freely
let Your Love come streaming in to his awareness, healing him of pain, and
giving him Your Own eternal joy. Such is the "sacrifice" You ask of me, and one
I gladly make; the only "cost" of restoration of Your memory to me, for the
salvation of the world.
And as we pay the debt we owe to truth, -- a debt that merely is the letting go
of self-deceptions and of images we worshipped falsely -- truth returns to us in
wholeness and in joy. We are deceived no longer. Love has now returned to our
awareness. And we are at peace again, for fear has gone and only love remains.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Below, is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries on this lesson, from "Journey
Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be purchased at the
following site: ~ M. Street.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lesson 323. "I gladly make the "sacrifice" of fear."
*The term <sacrifice> is in quotation marks because in truth we give up nothing.
We are not giving up something we deem valuable -- a behavior, ritual, or an
addiction, for example, that we think makes us feel better -- for Jesus is
asking us to let go of the fear that is the core of all dreams. We let go of it
simply by stepping back with him and looking at the thought system of separation
that gave rise to this fear and sustains it. Realizing at last that all this
makes no sense, we gladly "sacrifice" it for the truth.*
(1:1) "Here is the only "sacrifice" You ask of Your beloved Son; You ask him to
give up all suffering, all sense of loss and sadness, all anxiety and doubt, and
freely let Your Love come streaming in to his awareness, healing him of pain,
and giving him Your Own eternal joy."
*We are asked to give up only our misery and unhappiness. The problem is that we
do not believe that is all Jesus wants from us, for we do not accept that
holding onto our special identity, judgments, and being right is the source of
our pain and suffering. We continue to maintain we are right and Jesus is wrong
-- the world does indeed hold something we want, and we will find it:
"The first illusion, which must be displaced before another thought system
can take hold, is that it is a sacrifice to give up the things of this world.
What could this be but an illusion, since this world itself is nothing more than
that? ... It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that
the world has nothing to give. What can the sacrifice of nothing mean?"
(M-13.1:6-2:2).*
(1:2) "Such is the "sacrifice" You ask of me, and one I gladly make; the only
"cost" of restoration of Your memory to me, for the salvation of the world."
*The world's salvation is nothing more than the extension of salvation in my
mind -- or giving up fear for love, illusion for truth.*
(2) "And as we pay the debt we owe to truth, -- a debt that merely is the
letting go of self-deceptions and of images we worshipped falsely -- truth
returns to us in wholeness and in joy. We are deceived no longer. Love has now
returned to our awareness. And we are at peace again, for fear has gone and only
love remains."
*Christianity has taught that our sin against God demands payment to Him, a debt
paid through sacrifice, suffering, and death. Jesus is once again reminding us
that such thinking is upside down and backwards. The only "debt" to be repaid is
to ourselves, by letting go of the illusion, which, again, is nothing. Recall:
"The statement "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord" is a misperception by
which one assigns his own "evil" past to God. The "evil" past has nothing to do
with God. He did not create it and He does not maintain it. God does not believe
in retribution. His Mind does not create that way." (T-3.I.3:1-5)
Thus do we sacrifice the god of vengeance and hate for the God of Love.
Wholeness has returned to replace separation, and truth rises in our awareness
as we happily realize that for all this we gave up nothing!" (T-16.VI.11:4)*
Love and Blessings,
Lyn Johnson 719-369-1822
|
Lesson 322. I can give up but what was never real.
Lesson 322. I can give up but what was never real.
I sacrifice illusions; nothing more. And as illusions go I find the gifts
illusions tried to hide, awaiting me in shining welcome, and in readiness to
give God's ancient messages to me. His memory abides in every gift that I
receive of Him. And every dream serves only to conceal the Self which is God's
only Son, the likeness of Himself, the Holy One Who still abides in Him forever,
as He still abides in me.
Father, to You all sacrifice remains forever inconceivable. And so I cannot
sacrifice except in dreams. As You created me, I can give up nothing You gave
me. What You did not give has no reality. What loss can I anticipate except the
loss of fear, and the return of love into my mind?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Below, is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries on this lesson, from "Journey
Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be purchased at the
following site: ~ M. Street.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lesson 322. "I can give up but what was never real."
*Lessons 322 and 323 deal with the important theme of sacrifice. While it is not
a major theme in the workbook, it is prominent in the text and deserves some
discussion here. Sacrifice is the reigning principle of the ego's thought system
-- if we are to get what we want, someone or something must be sacrificed: <one
or the other>. In the beginning, it was God's Love that was sacrificed in order
to secure our individuality. Following the law of projection, once sacrifice was
made real we believed it would be used against us, and that God would in turn
demand sacrifice of His sinful Son.
Moreover, as the principle behind the birth of our individual identities,
sacrifice also governs the world, not to mention being the ego's mode of
self-preservation. Therefore, all selves emanating from that thought system
share the belief that salvation means sacrifice. If, for example, the ego's God
is to be saved from my sinful attack on Him, He is going to demand I sacrifice.
Thus we believe God asks us to give up something that is ours. This is the basis
of many world religions, and has been a crucial theme in Christianity: Jesus had
to be sacrificed so we could be forgiven by God and share His eternal life. The
ego thus has us believe that in order to retrieve God's Love we have to pay for
it by returning the life we stole, thereby paradoxically regaining it in the
hereafter. However, we do not want to give it all back, because then we would
disappear, and so we do it piecemeal: a little bit of happiness, pleasure, or
the body's blood -- but never everything.
Since we believe God demands we give back the separated selves we have judged to
be real, Jesus needs to remind us that we give up a thought system that was
illusory from the beginning. Thus he explains in the text how this course
"requires almost nothing of you. It is impossible to imagine one that asks so
little, or could offer more" (T-20.VII.1:7-8). He tells us all he requires is
for us to let go of the ego which is essentially nothing. To us, of course, the
ego is everything; and so letting it go is deemed sacrificial. People in
religious life -- and unfortunately this goes for students of A Course in
Miracles as well -- have shifted the focus of sacrifice from the <content> to
the <form>. Consequently, they believe that God demands they give up pleasure --
sex, food, money, and comfort. Thus does the ego twist the concept of sacrifice
in its favor and has us give up certain behaviors, which leads us to believe we
have accomplished something meaningful. However, the underlying ego thought
system remains intact, the ego's motivation from the beginning. Jesus explains
many times that sacrifice has given rise in the strange idea of martyrdom (e.g.,
T-3.1; T-6.1), wherein we become martyred to salvation. That is why people
struggle to give up addictions, habits, and relationships, for they think this
is what is asked of them. However, if we give up the <form> and retain the
<content>, we have given up nothing. That does not mean it is not helpful at
times to change behavior, but if we do not change the mind's underlying thought
system, changing behavior is only half the job, as Jesus says in this familiar
passage on sickness:
"The miracle is useless if you learn but that the body can be healed, for
this is not the lesson it was sent to teach. The lesson is the <mind> was sick
that thought the body could be sick; projecting out its guilt caused nothing,
and had no effects." (T-28.II.11.6-7) *
(1) "I sacrifice illusions; nothing more. And as illusions go I find the gifts
illusions tried to hide, awaiting me in shining welcome, and in readiness to
give God's ancient messages to me. His memory abides in every gift that I
receive of Him. And every dream serves only to conceal the Self which is God's
only Son, the likeness of Himself, the Holy One Who still abides in Him forever,
as He still abides in me."
*The key phrase is "every dream serves only to conceal the Self." This a major
emphasis of Jesus' teaching throughout A Course in Miracles: that we become
aware of the purpose of the ego thought system to which we have given our
allegiance. Our dreams of specialness and sacrifice are purposive; that is,
there is a reason we choose to be miserable. We come into this body to keep from
awareness the mind's power to choose our Self rather than the ego. This
subterfuge is what we need to see: our macrocosmic and microcosmic worlds are
part of ego's carefully contrived plot to keep us from returning to the mind,
where we would certainly choose truth instead of illusion, and correction
instead sin. Sacrifice of the body, then, becomes the central concept in the
ego's plan for <its> salvation.*
(2:1-2) "Father, to You all sacrifice remains forever inconceivable. And so I
cannot sacrifice except in dreams."
*In Heaven, loss is impossible. However, within the dream we call our lives, we
can indeed sacrifice, believing we are asked to give up our most treasured
possession: the "priceless pearl" (T-23.II.11:2) of our identity, surrounded by
the ego's specialness. Within our experience here, therefore, this special self
-- born of sacrifice, and sustained and threatened by it at the same time -- is
real and important to us. It is only when we step outside of the dream with
Jesus that we can look back and say: "My God, I am holding on to nothing. Not
only that, what I have been clinging to is making me miserable and unhappy, for
I identify with a self that does not even exist. Why, except in insanity, would
I continue to choose to do this?" *
(2:3-5) "As You created me, I can give up nothing You gave me. What You did not
give has no reality. What loss can I anticipate except the loss of fear, and the
return of love into my mind?"
*In other words, all we give up is an illusion, because God did not give the
separated self to us. What He did give -- our Identity as Christ -- we can never
lose, and what He did not give has no reality. That is why it is imperative for
almost everyone in this world -- whether they are religious or not -- to believe
in a God or some greater principle that gave them life. For the same reason,
many students of A Course in Miracles have difficulty with the idea that God did
not create this world, and why religions need to have God involved here in some
way. If He did not give us this world or body, they have no reality, and so we
can have no true existence here. Recognizing that we do not exist at all is our
greatest fear, but we support, reinforce, and save our special identities by
bringing God into them, believing we are born into this world as bodies that
lives deemed to be holy, part of an ongoing spiritual activity or divine
process.
Therefore, a passage such as the above is one of the most dreaded thoughts the
ego can hear. Again, it is terrifying to be told that God did not give us this
body or our specialness. In truth, He gave only Himself through extending His
Love, and this has nothing to do with the world or our illusory self.*
Love and Blessings,
Lyn Johnson 719-369-1822
|
Lesson 321. Father, my freedom is in You alone.
Lesson 321. Father, my freedom is in You alone.
I did not understand what made me free, nor what my freedom is, nor where to
look to find it. Father, I have searched in vain until I heard Your Voice
directing me. Now I would guide myself no more. For I have neither made nor
understood the way to find my freedom. But I trust in You. You Who endowed me
with my freedom as Your holy Son will not be lost to me. Your Voice directs me,
and the way to You is opening and clear to me at last. Father, my freedom is in
You alone. Father, it is my will that I return.
Today we answer for the world, which will be freed along with us. How glad are
we to find our freedom through the certain way our Father has established. And
how sure is all the world's salvation, when we learn our freedom can be found in
God alone.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Below, is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries on this lesson, from "Journey
Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be purchased at the
following site: ~ M. Street.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lesson 321."Father, my freedom is in You alone."
*The ego tells us our freedom lies in itself alone, for to remain with God is to
be the slave of a tyrant who strips us of our will and independence. The ego
thus entices us to choose against the Holy Spirit, promising that thus we will
be free to be the unique individuals we are.*
(1:1) "I did not understand what made me free, nor what my freedom is, nor where
to look to find it."
*Recall that the underlying theme running through the lessons in Part II is
recognizing our mistaken choices. Here Jesus tells us we were wrong in thinking
we knew what freedom was, not to mention where to find it.*
(1:2) "Father, I have searched in vain until I heard Your Voice directing me."
*This is what occurs when I am finally able to say: "There must be another way.
I no longer want to be directed by my specialness needs, but by the Voice that
will lead me home, restoring the awareness of my freedom as God's Son." *
(1:3-4) "Now I would guide myself no more. For I have neither made nor
understood the way to find my freedom."
*Jesus clearly feels that the prayer closing Lesson 189 is important -- "Father,
we do not know the way to You. But we have called, and You have answered us"
(W-pI.189.10) -- as he refers to it many times, and once again here.*
(1:5-9) "But I trust in You. You Who endowed me with my freedom as Your holy Son
will not be lost to me. Your Voice directs me, and the way to You is opening and
clear to me at last. Father, my freedom is in You alone. Father, it is my will
that I return."
*Realizing we were wrong, we joyfully choose the freedom that comes from
re-uniting our Will with God's:
"When you have learned that your will is God's, you could no more will to be
without Him than He could will to be without you. This is freedom and this is
joy."(T-8.II.6:4-5)*
(2:1) "Today we answer for the world, which will be freed along with us."
*This is another expression of the oneness of the Son's mind, and the world with
it. The world must be freed because the world is nothing more than a projection
of our thoughts.*
(2:2-3) "How glad are we to find our freedom through the certain way our Father
has established. And how sure is all the world's salvation, when we learn our
freedom can be found in God alone."
*This "certain way" is forgiveness. Releasing our brothers from the prison house
of guilt, we find our freedom, joined with theirs.*
Love and Blessings,
Lyn Johnson 719-369-1822
|
For those doing the lessons, this special instruction is to be read daily before the next ten lessons.
11. What is Creation?
(1) Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit. Only love creates, and only like itself. There was no time when all that it created was not there. Nor will there be a time when anything that it created suffers any loss. Forever and forever are God's Thoughts exactly as they were and as they are, unchanged through time and after time is done.
(2) God's Thoughts are given all the power that their own Creator has. For He would add to love by its extension. Thus His Son shares in creation, and must therefore share in power to create. What God has willed to be forever One will still be One when time is over; and will not be changed throughout the course of time, remaining as it was before the thought of time began.
(3) Creation is the opposite of all illusions, for creation is the truth. Creation is the holy Son of God, for in creation is His Will complete in every aspect, making every part container of the whole. Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate; forever held within His holy Will, beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection and of any spot upon its sinlessness.
(4) We are creation; we the Sons of God. We seem to be discrete, and unaware of our eternal unity with Him. Yet back of all our doubts, past all our fears, there still is certainty. For love remains with all its Thoughts, its sureness being theirs. God's memory is in our holy minds, which know their oneness and their unity with their Creator. Let our function be only to let this memory return, only to let God's Will be done on earth, only to be restored to sanity, and to be but as God created us.
(5) Our Father calls to us. We hear His Voice, and we forgive creation in the Name of its Creator, Holiness Itself, Whose Holiness His Own creation shares; Whose Holiness is still a part of us.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Below is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries on this section, from his book set called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be purchased at the following site: M.Street
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
11. What is Creation?
We have in this summary another example of Jesus appearing to speak out of both sides of his mouth. He describes <creation> as perfect oneness, at the same time he speaks of creations and Sons of God. The explanation is that on one hand he is stating the pure truth, which is that Christ is perfectly unified and at one with His Creator. On the other hand Jesus is reflecting this truth to us in our separated state, in which we clearly believe that the Sons of God are many. Thus both descriptions are true, depending upon Jesus pedagogical purpose and emphasis.
(1) "Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit. Only love creates, and only like itself. There was no time when all that it created was not there. Nor will there be a time when anything that it created suffers any loss. Forever and forever are God's Thoughts exactly as they were and as they are, unchanged through time and after time is done."
Again, Jesus says <Thoughts> because we believe God has many Sons. In saying "There was no time when all that it created was not there," he is teaching us once again that the separation never happened. We experience loss only if we do not believe we are the creation of God. In that <un>holy instant of insanity we believed we were the ego's creation instead. All experience of loss originated in that mistaken belief, while the truth of our Identity as Thought awaits our sure return through the Holy Spirit, as we recall:
"God created His Sons by extending His Thought, and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other. The Holy Spirit enables you to perceive this wholeness now." (T-6.II.8:1-3)
We cannot know the wholeness of the Kingdom until we recognize the unity of creation, even as it is reflected in the dream. In other words, we need to see all people sharing the need for forgiveness -- with no exceptions. Recognizing our unified need or purpose leads us remember our unified Self.
(2:1-3) "God's Thoughts are given all the power that their own Creator has. For He would add to love by its extension. Thus His Son shares in creation, and must therefore share in power to create."
This aspect of Jesus' teaching is more prominent in the text, and appears infrequently in the workbook. As part of God, we share His attributes -- He creates and we create, too. The extension of His Self -- His Love and Will -- is Christ, the creation of God. Likewise, we also extend our Self as Christ -- our Love and Will -- and that extension is our creations, which have nothing to do with the world of time and space.
(2:4) "What God has willed to be forever One will still be One when time is over; and will not be changed throughout the course of time, remaining as it was before the thought of time began."
In other words, in time we have we have the illusion of fragmentation and separation, and God's Sons appear to be many. Yet the reality is our perfect oneness. When the dream is over and awareness of our individuality has disappeared, all that remains is God's one Son, Who never left His eternal home. He merely had a bad dream in which he left the timeless for the world of time, the nightmare from which he will certainly awaken:
"God in His knowledge is not waiting, but His Kingdom is bereft while you wait.... Delay does not matter in eternity, but it is tragic in time. You have elected to be in time rather than eternity, and therefore believe you <are> in time. ...You do not belong in time. Your place is only in eternity, where God Himself placed you forever." (T-5.VI.1:1,3-4,6-7).
(3:1-2) "Creation is the opposite of all illusions, for creation is the truth. Creation is the holy Son of God, for in creation is His Will complete in every aspect, making every part container of the whole."
Another important theme from the text: the whole is found in every part. In the right mind of every seemingly separated part of the Sonship -- and each of us who appears as one of those parts -- the memory of Who we are as Christ is firmly imbedded, a fact that has never changed. Thus Jesus teaches that when we forgive one brother totally we have forgiven every brother, for we are all part of the one Son: wrong- right- and One-minded. Here is a passage from the text on the part whole relationship:
"The whole does define the part, but the part does not define the whole. Yet to know in part is to know entirely because of the fundamental difference between knowledge and perception. In perception the whole is built up of parts that can separate and reassemble in different constellations. But knowledge never changes, so its constellation is permanent. The idea of part-whole relationships has meaning only at the level of perception, where change is possible. Otherwise, there is no difference between the part and whole." (T-8.VIII.1.10-15).
(3:3) "Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate; forever held within His holy Will, beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection and of any spot upon its sinlessness."
Our oneness has never changed, and can never change -- the essence of the Holy Spirit's Atonement principle:
"You can lose sight of oneness, but can not make sacrifice of its reality. Nor can you lose what you would sacrifice, nor keep the Holy Spirit from His task of showing you that it has not been lost." (T-26.1.6:1-2).
(4:1-2) "We are creation; we the Sons of God. We seem to be discrete, and unaware of our eternal unity with Him."
Jesus addresses us here in our separated state, as he usually does throughout A Course in Miracles. We appear separate and separated, each from the other, in a place where one ends and another begins. The body is the point of demarcation, not only of the separation between brothers, but between us and God:
"Such is the strange position in which those in a world inhabited by bodies seem to be. Each body seems to house a separate mind, a disconnected thought, living alone and in no way joined to the Thought by which it was created. Each tiny fragment seems to be self-contained, needing another for some things, but by no means totally dependent on its one Creator for everything ..." (T-18.VIII.5:1-3)
(4:3-5) "Yet back of all our doubts, past all our fears, there still is certainty. For love remains with all its Thoughts, its sureness being theirs. God's memory is in our holy minds, which know their oneness and their unity with their Creator."
The memory of God in our right minds holds within it the one Thought of Christ -- Who we are as God's one Son. When we forget and still believe we are in the world -- vacillating between our wrong and right minds -- the concept of may Sons of God is meaningful to us. That is why Jesus refers to us as Thoughts instead of Thought. Regardless, he wants us to accept that our fears, anxieties, and concerns are but fragile veils that cannot keep the light of certainty from our awareness. We do not have to be saved, but merely have to accept the certain fact that because of God's Love, we <are> saved:
"Salvation is as sure as God. His certainty suffices. Learn that even the darkest nightmare that disturbs the mind of God's sleeping Son holds no power over him. He will learn the lesson of awaking. God watches over him and light surrounds him.... His sleep will not withstand the call to wake. The mission of redemption will be fulfilled as surely as the creation will remain unchanged throughout eternity. You do not have to know that Heaven is yours to make it so. It is so." (T-13.XI.9.3-7,10:3-6).
(4:6) "Let our function be only to let this memory return, only to let God's Will be done on earth, only to be restored to sanity, and to be but as God created us."
We complete our forgiveness lessons -- the way to let the memory of God return -- and then choose to let the dream of separation go. That is our function -- by accepting the Atonement, forgiving our brothers totally, we deny the ego's world and remember we have always been as God created us. We rejoice that our judgments were wrong and His Love right: separation from our brothers and our Source was a lie, and our inherent oneness the only truth.
(5) "Our Father calls to us. We hear His Voice, and we forgive creation in the Name of its Creator, Holiness Itself, Whose Holiness His Own creation shares; Whose Holiness is still a part of us."
If God's Son is holy, shares in the Holiness of his Father and is one, and he attacks others -- in other words, chooses to see only what appears to be unholiness or sinfulness in the dream -- he says that not only what appears to be unholiness or sinfulness in the dream -- he says that not only are they unholy, but he is, too. Since <ideas leave not their source>, his creator must also be unholy, which of course is true within the ego's dream. Once again, Jesus stresses our oneness with each other and with God. It is important to remember when we are tempted to judge, criticize, or make people objects of our specialness, that we are defining them as different from us, and differences always mean unholiness since they reflect separation from Holiness. Moreover, if you are unholy I must be as well. Therefore Jesus says to us: The way you see someone else is the way you see yourself: separate and apart from each other, from me, and from God. Is this the image with which you wish to identify?" Recall these comforting lines from Helen's poem, "The Comforter," reminding us of God's Voice that continuously calls to us. His call also invites us to call to our brothers, to remind us we are not alone in our seeking. This ensures hearing the Voice that will remind us our goal has already been found. Forgiveness has thus led us back to the Holiness we never truly left, and we are blessed in our comfort:
Step back, My child, and let Him lead the way
Whom I have sent to you. He holds your hand
And speaks to you of Me.
..........................................
My Voice I send
To sing in soundless places. Hear from Me
The song a Father sings to you, His child;
A melody from far beyond the world.
Step back and listen, for He comes to bless
And tell you that you are not comfortless.
(The Gifts of God, p.71)
Love and Blessings,
Lyn Johnson 719-369-1822
|
LESSON 320. My Father gives all power unto me.
LESSON 320. My Father gives all power unto me.
The Son of God is limitless. There are no limits on his strength, his peace, his
joy, nor any attributes his Father gave in his creation. What he wills with his
Creator and Redeemer must be done. His holy will can never be denied, because
his Father shines upon his mind, and lays before it all the strength and love in
earth and Heaven. I am he to whom all this is given. I am he in whom the power
of my Father's Will abides.
<Your Will can do all things in me, and then extend to all the world as well
through me. There is no limit on Your Will. And so all power has been given to
Your Son.>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Below, is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries on this lesson, from "Journey
Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be purchased at the
following site: ~ M. Street.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
LESSON 320. "My Father gives all power unto me."
*This statement is another reinterpretation of a biblical saying referred to in
A Course in Miracles. In the New Testament, Jesus says "All power is given unto
me in earth and heaven (Matthew 28:18), which means God gave Jesus all power,
<not anyone else>. His is the power because he is God's Son. In the Course,
Jesus says that God does indeed give all power unto His Son, but we <are all His
Sons>. At the beginning of this lesson, Jesus refers to the limitlessness of the
Son of God, yet in the ego's Christian thought system the Sonship of God is
limited, for there is only one true Son: the rest of us are adopted (Ephesians
1:5). We accept this second-class condition as true and project it out, seeing
everyone as more limited than we -- the specialness that is at the core of the
ego's power.*
(1:1-4) "The Son of God is limitless. There are no limits on his strength, his
peace, his joy, nor any attributes his Father gave in his creation. What he
wills with his Creator and Redeemer must be done. His holy will can never be
denied, because his Father shines upon his mind, and lays before it all the
strength and love in earth and Heaven."
*The strength of God's limitlessness is the answer to all problems perceived
here:
"The oneness of the Creator and the creation is your wholeness, your sanity
and your limitless power. This limitless power is God's gift to you, because it
is what you are.... There is no circumstance it cannot answer, and no problem
which is not resolved within its gracious light."
(T-7.VI.10:4-5;T-26.VII.18:5).*
(1:5-6) "I am he to whom all this is given. I am he in whom the power of my
Father's Will abides."
*Again, following from Lesson 319, this is not arrogance but the humility that
says this power is not in me alone, and individual lording it over others. It is
the power of Christ, God's one Son as He created Him, and I know the power is
truly mine when I share its strength and love with the world:
"To use the power God has given you as He would have it used is natural. It
is not arrogant to be as He created you, nor to make use of what He gave to
answer all His Son's mistakes and set him free. But it is arrogant to lay aside
the power that He gave, and choose a little senseless wish instead of what He
wills." (T-26.18:1-3).*
(2:1) "<Your Will can do all things in me, and then extend to all the world as
well through me."
*When my mind is healed, God's Son is one, and since <ideas leave not their
source>, the world is one with me as well.*
(2:2-3) "There is no limit on Your Will. And so all power has been given to Your
Son.>"
*The conclusion of Helen's "The Singing Reed" nicely expresses this unity of
Father and Son:
"How holy are my footsteps, which but go
To do the Will of God, Whose Son I am.
And how forever perfect is my will,
Which is in no way separate from His Own."
(The Gifts of God, p.3)*
Love and Blessings,
Lyn Johnson 719-369-1822
|
LESSON 319. I came for the salvation of the world.
LESSON 319. I came for the salvation of the world.
(1) Here is a thought from which all arrogance has been removed, and only truth remains. For arrogance opposes truth. But when there is no arrogance the truth will come immediately, and fill up the space the ego left unoccupied by lies. Only the ego can be limited, and therefore it must seek for aims which are curtailed and limiting. The ego thinks that what one gains, totality must lose. And yet it is the Will of God I learn that what one gains is given unto all.
(2) <Father, Your Will is total. And the goal which stems from it shares its totality. What aim but the salvation of the world could You have given me? And what but this could be the Will my Self has shared with You?>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Below, is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries on this lesson, from "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be purchased at the following site: ~ M. Street.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
LESSON 319. "I came for the salvation of the world."
Recall the earlier lesson, "Salvation of the world depends on me" (W-p1.186). As Jesus tells us, this is not a statement of arrogance, but of humility.
(1:1-3) "Here is a thought from which all arrogance has been removed, and only truth remains. For arrogance opposes truth. But when there is no arrogance the truth will come immediately, and fill up the space the ego left unoccupied by lies."
Our function is to be aware of the ego's arrogant interpretation of "I am the salvation of the world," realizing its insanity, and ask Jesus' help to look at it differently. Through his eyes we realize we are the salvation of the world, not because of something we do, but because of the unity that is our Self. Our humbly bringing the arrogance to the truth allows truth simply to be.
(1:4-5) "Only the ego can be limited, and therefore it must seek for aims which are curtailed and limiting. The ego thinks that what one gains, totality must lose."
This is a wonderfully succinct statement of what happened in the original instant. Because of the principle of <one or the other>, winning our individuality meant totality lost: the ego and world were thus born and saved when we believed we killed wholeness and perfect Love. Yet true salvation of the world comes in realizing all this was a mistake, with no true effects.
(1:6) "And yet it is the Will of God I learn that what one gains is given unto all."
The rock on which salvation rests, Jesus tells us in the text, is that no one loses and everyone gains. To be God's Son does not mean God has to be destroyed. It means we are at one with our Father, as is every other seemingly separate fragment. Thus we read how the Holy Spirit converts the ego's insane world of separation to a sane world of forgiveness, undoing the ego's belief in <one or the other>:
"The Holy Spirit has the power to change the whole foundation of the world you see to something else; a basis not insane, on which a sane perception can be based, another world perceived. And one in which nothing is contradicted that would lead the Son of God to sanity and joy. Nothing attests to death and cruelty; to separation and to differences. For here is everything perceived as one, and no one loses that each one may gain." (T-25.VII.5).
(2) " <Father, Your Will is total. And the goal which stems from it shares its totality. What aim but the salvation of the world could You have given me? And what but this could be the Will my Self has shared with You?>"
To remember that God's Will embraces mine, as well as the Sonship as a whole, I must share the single purpose of forgiveness with my brother. Thus are we saved together, and the world along with us:
"You and your brother are the same as God Himself is One, and not divided in His Will. And you must have one purpose, since He gave the same to both of you. His Will is brought together as you join in will, that you be made complete by offering completion to your brother. See not in him the sinfulness he sees, but give him honor that you may esteem yourself and him. To you and your brother is given the power of salvation, that escape from darkness into light be yours to share; that you may see as one what never has been separate, nor apart from all God's Love as given equally." (T-25.II.11)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
10. What Is the Last Judgment?
(1) Christ's Second Coming gives the Son of God this gift: to hear the Voice for God proclaim that what is false is false, and what is true has never changed. And this the judgment is in which perception ends. At first you see a world that has accepted this as true, projected from a now corrected mind. And with this holy sight, perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done.
(2) The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless.
(3) You who believed that God's Last Judgment would condemn the world to hell along with you, accept this holy truth: God's Judgment is the gift of the Correction He bestowed on all your errors, freeing you from them, and all effects they ever seemed to have. To fear God's saving grace is but to fear complete release from suffering, return to peace, security and happiness, and union with your own Identity.
(4) God's Final Judgment is as merciful as every step in His appointed plan to bless His Son, and call him to return to the eternal peace He shares with him. Be not afraid of love. For it alone can heal all sorrow, wipe away all tears, and gently waken from his dream of pain the Son whom God acknowledges as His. Be not afraid of this. Salvation asks you give it welcome. And the world awaits your glad acceptance, which will set it free.
(5) This is God's Final Judgment: "You are still My holy Son, forever innocent, forever loving and forever loved, as limitless as your Creator, and completely changeless and forever pure. Therefore awaken and return to Me. I am your Father and you are My Son.
Love and Blessings,
Lyn Johnson 719-369-1822
|
Hi All,
Today I recalled that these could be easily accessed by going to the search box ROFL!
Here is my main go to site which answers the content of all questions about ACIM. It also looks at the question re: consciousness/Consciousness. It is well worth having at your fingertips. I have been allowed to post some on the site There are close to 1000 Q & As in this collection!
From The??
Q #853: Chapter 4 of "All Are Called", volume I in The Message of A Course in Miracles , goes through a lengthy description of our three selves. I got bogged down several times trying to "cut to the chase." Please tell me if I got it right: self A is the holy Son of God who for a brief moment freaked out and thereby was no longer a whole. As a result, self A realized that he was now in the land of good and evil and felt guilty for that. Next, self A figured out that if he blamed somebody else -- self B -- then he wouldn't feel guilt any more. So self B became an innocent victim of self A. Self C becomes the victim of the body and hates everybody. And around and around it goes?
A: A valiant effort, but let's see if we can get a little more clarity on this central part of the ego's myth of separation and sin, as uncovered in the Course. The description of the three selves you refer to in Chapter 4 of The Message of A Course in Miracles, Vol. I, is actually an extension to the level of the world and individual bodies of what was presented in Chapter 2 to explain the initial A-B-C split at the level of thought in the mind, prior to the projection of bodies and the world. And so it is there, in the mind, that we need to begin, if what you refer to in Chapter 4 is going to make any sense.
Beginning then at the level of mind, self A is not the holy Son of God, but an illusory thought of a separate self that we as the sleeping Son believe we have wrested from God when we wanted the separation from Him to be real. It is a fiction we have made up in our feverish ego dream and identified with, calling it ourselves. And this separate self is the original home of sin and guilt, according to the ego's story, because its life came selfishly at God's expense, destroying His Oneness to bring itself into a separate, autonomous existence.
At this point in the Son's delusional mind, there is nothing else -- no land that self A seems to occupy, no world, and no other self. Now to deal with the immense guilt his ego says is real over destroying God Himself, yes, the Son as self A would like to blame someone else, to dump the guilt elsewhere. But there is no one else to blame, no other self. So the solution, drawing on the only dynamic available in the Son's split mind -- the thought of separation -- is to separate self A into two selves, B and C, identifying with self B and pushing all the guilt onto self C. Self C, in the Son's insane imagination, now becomes the angry wrathful God who is going to punish the Son, self B, for his sin against Him. But of course, the sin and guilt in self C, now seen as separate from self B, are nothing other than the sin and guilt of self A, split off. But this is what enables the Son, now identified with self B, to believe that the guilt is no longer in him, that he is now "innocent." All of this is as much a delusional fantasy as the initial making of self A.
And so self A has seemed to vanish from the scene, leaving only self B and self C in the mind. As the Son we are now identified with the "innocent" self B, who is the potential victim of self C, in whom all the sin and guilt now reside. Again, this is all happening only at the level of thought. For the drama to play out and allow us to convince ourselves that we are truly "innocent" victims, we need a world of time and space and, in particular, bodies. For bodies are vulnerable and weak, and demonstrate quite convincingly that we are powerless to change in any significant way what happens to us -- clear-cut criteria for victimhood. And so the mind seems to fragment into millions of pieces, but each fragment retains that same progression from a guilty self A to an innocent self B, with all the guilt now residing in a guilty self C, the self split off from self A that we no longer identify with. And every fragment in the Son's mind seems to play out this conflict, now projected from the mind onto the screen of the world, each desperately attempting to affirm its innocence by demonstrating everyone else's guilt. And you need a body to be able to point the finger of blame. Except that every fragment is trying to play the same blame game. And so to ourselves, we are each an innocent self B, but to everyone else, we're another victimizing self C. And the guilt is swapped back and forth, but its reality is never questioned.
It is only when we can shift our identification away from the B-C split in the world back to the guilty but forgotten self A in the mind that we can begin to look at our own guilt, which has nothing to do with the seeming relationship between B and C in the world. For they are only shadows of the thought of guilt in the mind. And when we return our attention to the illusory self A in the mind, we can at last begin to question the reality of the guilt. It is through this process of recognizing first where the guilt originates, and then questioning its reality, which is what the Course means by forgiveness, that we begin to remember the truly innocent self A' that we all share (see chapter 5 of volume I of The Message ). At the same time, while we still remain identified with the body in the world, we will begin to see self B' and self C' as the same, rather than as different -- both caught in an insane thought system, believing that guilt is real and desperately looking to escape it. Over time, as we practice forgiveness, we will identify more and more with the innocent self A', a reflection of our true Self as Christ, Who has nothing to do with any As or Bs or Cs.
For additional discussion of the splits in the mind which are expressed in the world, see Questions #176 and #630.
For more on the four splits:
Q #630: I remember hearing Ken Wapnick, on a workshop tape, say that as the wrong mind splits the right mind also splits. Would you review these right-minded splits?
A: The right-minded splits are not splits per se but are simply the Holy Spirit's corrections for the deceptions of the ego's wrong-minded splits. Since we find ourselves self-identified as bodies in the world, at the end of the series of splits the ego has led us along to take us as far away as it possibly can from the truth of Who we are as spirit, the right-minded answer is simply the undoing of those splits, in reverse order.
Briefly, the ego's first split is what seems to cast us out of the oneness of Heaven, beginning the dream of separation which seems to establish us as a separate mind that has consciousness and independence from its Source. At this point, our illusory independent existence is very vulnerable, very fragile, since it takes very little to remember our reality as God's only Son, perfectly joined with Him and perfectly at peace, which is what the Holy Spirit in our mind represents. And so to protect our individuality, the second split involves our choice to identify completely with the ego and split the Holy Spirit off from our awareness, thereby forgetting that the ego is a choice we have made and not our reality.
The third ego split encompasses the ego's ingenious myth of sin, guilt and fear, in which we view the separation not only as real, but as a sinful attack on God, destroying Him as a consequence of having disrupted the perfect unity of Heaven in which God has His Being. The guilt over this sin is overwhelming and **our only defense against it, if it is real, is to split the sin and guilt off, projecting them outside ourselves onto a made-up God,** Who becomes the wrathful avenger, intent on vengeance against us for our sin against Him.
But, as with each of the ego's splits, this leads to its own set of problems, requiring yet another defensive split. For if I exist in the mind with this maniacal God, bent on my destruction, I need to escape. And so the fourth and final split involves projecting my own identity out into a world of form and bodies, escaping my mind and hiding in the world. But what the ego has failed to tell me is that this solution involves the projection of all the contents of my wrong-mind into the world of form, so that I now live in a world of fear. For the sin and guilt are all still around me, but now external to me in the world and in all my relationships. And so the original vulnerability and fragility of the thought of separation in my mind is now the basis of my identity as a body in the world. Of course, the advantage of this final arrangement is that I am still an individual, but it seems that forces beyond my control have brought about my existence. And if I am the innocent victim of the sinful, guilty world, how can I be held accountable for that original attack on God. How could I possibly be that powerful? Just look at this pathetically weak self I am, despite my best efforts to strengthen and protect myself physically, psychologically and emotionally against a hostile world!
And so it is here we find ourselves, as far removed from our true Identity as spirit as the ego could possibly entice us to go. And it is with this fourth split that the right-minded correction must begin. We are not asked to deny our experience of ourselves as bodies in the world -- the result of the fourth split -- but to be open to a different interpretation of that experience. Rather than focusing on differences as the ego has encouraged us to do -- seeing my innocence as dependent on proving your guilt -- A Course in Miracles is inviting us first to begin to recognize that we are all the same, struggling with our feelings of guilt by trying to project them on to everyone else. In other words, we all share the same guilt and the same need to be released from it. As we begin to accept this idea of shared interests, we will become more aware that we are a mind that is making choices to see the world and others in certain ways, rather than simply a victimized body, although we will almost certainly continue to experience ourselves as victims much of the time. And so we gradually begin to undo the final split.
As we begin to see the world and our relationships differently, we will be more willing to look at the sin and guilt buried in our own mind, recognizing its real source in our identification with the ego, thereby beginning to reduce our investment in the third split. And the right-minded correction for this willingness to look honestly will be the recognition that there is an alternative in our mind to the sin, guilt and fear that up until now we have felt the need to split off and project outside of ourselves. And that alternative is the Holy Spirit, the Reminder of the true innocence we share with everyone else, as we let go of the need to make differences real. And so the wall between the right mind and the wrong mind that we have attempted to make impenetrable with the second split begins to become more porous, allowing more of the light of the right mind to shine on the darkness of the wrong mind, revealing increasingly its illusory nature.
The undoing of these three splits is the focus of the Course's teachings and it involves a process that will require great willingness on our part over time, for the self we are identified with in the world -- the result of the fourth split -- will lose its meaning and appeal to us over time as we practice the forgiveness that healing the splits requires. But along the way, that shift engenders tremendous fear so long as we still have an investment in the separation and in our separate, unique, individual self being real.
At the end of the process, once we have allowed the barrier we have imposed between the right mind and the wrong mind to dissolve completely in the light of total forgiveness, we will be in the real world, still aware of the dream of separation but completely unaffected by it. And it is from this place of complete healing that we are ready for the undoing of the first split, accomplished by what the Course metaphorically refers to as God's last step (e.g., T.7.I), in which He lifts us up out of the illusion of duality and returns us to the absolute oneness of Heaven, which in reality we have never left.
Although the process of undoing the splits is described here as if it were linear, in reality it is not, as the miracle, or the holy instant, which is involved in undoing the second, third and fourth splits, occurs outside of time and space. And so our experience will be that we will be moving back and forth between the various levels of the splits over and over again, over time. For example, the Holy Spirit may seem to be a part of our healing process almost from the beginning of our work with the Course, yet we will not really understand the nature of His reality until we have come to understand the nature of the split mind more fully. And despite our increasing recognition that our only real choice is made in the mind, we will continue to get caught in our victim scripts in the world and will need to remind ourselves that we are really the same as all our brothers and sisters.
Those interested in a more in-depth exploration of the four splits may find the tape set, Separation and Forgiveness: The Four Splits and Their Undoing, and volume I, "All Are Called," from the two-volume book set, The Message of A Course in Miracles (both publications by Kenneth Wapnick) helpful.
From the FACIM Question & Answer Service (astericks/highlighting are mine)Q #853: Chapter 4 of "All Are Called", volume I in The Message of A Course in Miracles , goes through a lengthy description of our three selves. I got bogged down several times trying to "cut to the chase." Please tell me if I got it right: self A is the holy Son of God who for a brief moment freaked out and thereby was no longer a whole. As a result, self A realized that he was now in the land of good and evil and felt guilty for that. Next, self A figured out that if he blamed somebody else -- self B -- then he wouldn't feel guilt any more. So self B became an innocent victim of self A. Self C becomes the victim of the body and hates everybody. And around and around it goes?
A: A valiant effort, but let's see if we can get a little more clarity on this central part of the ego's myth of separation and sin, as uncovered in the Course. The description of the three selves you refer to in Chapter 4 of The Message of A Course in Miracles, Vol. I, is actually an extension to the level of the world and individual bodies of what was presented in Chapter 2 to explain the initial A-B-C split at the level of thought in the mind, prior to the projection of bodies and the world. And so it is there, in the mind, that we need to begin, if what you refer to in Chapter 4 is going to make any sense.
Beginning then at the level of mind, self A is not the holy Son of God, but an illusory thought of a separate self that we as the sleeping Son believe we have wrested from God when we wanted the separation from Him to be real. It is a fiction we have made up in our feverish ego dream and identified with, calling it ourselves. And this separate self is the original home of sin and guilt, according to the ego's story, because its life came selfishly at God's expense, destroying His Oneness to bring itself into a separate, autonomous existence.
At this point in the Son's delusional mind, there is nothing else -- no land that self A seems to occupy, no world, and no other self. Now to deal with the immense guilt his ego says is real over destroying God Himself, yes, the Son as self A would like to blame someone else, to dump the guilt elsewhere. But there is no one else to blame, no other self. So the solution, drawing on the only dynamic available in the Son's split mind -- the thought of separation -- is to separate self A into two selves, B and C, identifying with self B and pushing all the guilt onto self C. Self C, in the Son's insane imagination, now becomes the angry wrathful God who is going to punish the Son, self B, for his sin against Him. But of course, the sin and guilt in self C, now seen as separate from self B, are nothing other than the sin and guilt of self A, split off. But this is what enables the Son, now identified with self B, to believe that the guilt is no longer in him, that he is now "innocent." All of this is as much a delusional fantasy as the initial making of self A.
And so self A has seemed to vanish from the scene, leaving only self B and self C in the mind. As the Son we are now identified with the "innocent" self B, who is the potential victim of self C, in whom all the sin and guilt now reside. Again, this is all happening only at the level of thought. For the drama to play out and allow us to convince ourselves that we are truly "innocent" victims, we need a world of time and space and, in particular, bodies. For bodies are vulnerable and weak, and demonstrate quite convincingly that we are powerless to change in any significant way what happens to us -- clear-cut criteria for victimhood. And so the mind seems to fragment into millions of pieces, but each fragment retains that same progression from a guilty self A to an innocent self B, with all the guilt now residing in a guilty self C, the self split off from self A that we no longer identify with. And every fragment in the Son's mind seems to play out this conflict, now projected from the mind onto the screen of the world, each desperately attempting to affirm its innocence by demonstrating everyone else's guilt. And you need a body to be able to point the finger of blame. Except that every fragment is trying to play the same blame game. And so to ourselves, we are each an innocent self B, but to everyone else, we're another victimizing self C. And the guilt is swapped back and forth, but its reality is never questioned.
It is only when we can shift our identification away from the B-C split in the world back to the guilty but forgotten self A in the mind that we can begin to look at our own guilt, which has nothing to do with the seeming relationship between B and C in the world. For they are only shadows of the thought of guilt in the mind. And when we return our attention to the illusory self A in the mind, we can at last begin to question the reality of the guilt. It is through this process of recognizing first where the guilt originates, and then questioning its reality, which is what the Course means by forgiveness, that we begin to remember the truly innocent self A' that we all share (see chapter 5 of volume I of The Message ). At the same time, while we still remain identified with the body in the world, we will begin to see self B' and self C' as the same, rather than as different -- both caught in an insane thought system, believing that guilt is real and desperately looking to escape it. Over time, as we practice forgiveness, we will identify more and more with the innocent self A', a reflection of our true Self as Christ, Who has nothing to do with any As or Bs or Cs.
For additional discussion of the splits in the mind which are expressed in the world, see Questions #176 and #630.
For more on the four splits:
Q #630: I remember hearing Ken Wapnick, on a workshop tape, say that as the wrong mind splits the right mind also splits. Would you review these right-minded splits?
A: The right-minded splits are not splits per se but are simply the Holy Spirit's corrections for the deceptions of the ego's wrong-minded splits. Since we find ourselves self-identified as bodies in the world, at the end of the series of splits the ego has led us along to take us as far away as it possibly can from the truth of Who we are as spirit, the right-minded answer is simply the undoing of those splits, in reverse order.
Briefly, the ego's first split is what seems to cast us out of the oneness of Heaven, beginning the dream of separation which seems to establish us as a separate mind that has consciousness and independence from its Source. At this point, our illusory independent existence is very vulnerable, very fragile, since it takes very little to remember our reality as God's only Son, perfectly joined with Him and perfectly at peace, which is what the Holy Spirit in our mind represents. And so to protect our individuality, the second split involves our choice to identify completely with the ego and split the Holy Spirit off from our awareness, thereby forgetting that the ego is a choice we have made and not our reality.
The third ego split encompasses the ego's ingenious myth of sin, guilt and fear, in which we view the separation not only as real, but as a sinful attack on God, destroying Him as a consequence of having disrupted the perfect unity of Heaven in which God has His Being. The guilt over this sin is overwhelming and **our only defense against it, if it is real, is to split the sin and guilt off, projecting them outside ourselves onto a made-up God,** Who becomes the wrathful avenger, intent on vengeance against us for our sin against Him.
But, as with each of the ego's splits, this leads to its own set of problems, requiring yet another defensive split. For if I exist in the mind with this maniacal God, bent on my destruction, I need to escape. And so the fourth and final split involves projecting my own identity out into a world of form and bodies, escaping my mind and hiding in the world. But what the ego has failed to tell me is that this solution involves the projection of all the contents of my wrong-mind into the world of form, so that I now live in a world of fear. For the sin and guilt are all still around me, but now external to me in the world and in all my relationships. And so the original vulnerability and fragility of the thought of separation in my mind is now the basis of my identity as a body in the world. Of course, the advantage of this final arrangement is that I am still an individual, but it seems that forces beyond my control have brought about my existence. And if I am the innocent victim of the sinful, guilty world, how can I be held accountable for that original attack on God. How could I possibly be that powerful? Just look at this pathetically weak self I am, despite my best efforts to strengthen and protect myself physically, psychologically and emotionally against a hostile world!
And so it is here we find ourselves, as far removed from our true Identity as spirit as the ego could possibly entice us to go. And it is with this fourth split that the right-minded correction must begin. We are not asked to deny our experience of ourselves as bodies in the world -- the result of the fourth split -- but to be open to a different interpretation of that experience. Rather than focusing on differences as the ego has encouraged us to do -- seeing my innocence as dependent on proving your guilt -- A Course in Miracles is inviting us first to begin to recognize that we are all the same, struggling with our feelings of guilt by trying to project them on to everyone else. In other words, we all share the same guilt and the same need to be released from it. As we begin to accept this idea of shared interests, we will become more aware that we are a mind that is making choices to see the world and others in certain ways, rather than simply a victimized body, although we will almost certainly continue to experience ourselves as victims much of the time. And so we gradually begin to undo the final split.
As we begin to see the world and our relationships differently, we will be more willing to look at the sin and guilt buried in our own mind, recognizing its real source in our identification with the ego, thereby beginning to reduce our investment in the third split. And the right-minded correction for this willingness to look honestly will be the recognition that there is an alternative in our mind to the sin, guilt and fear that up until now we have felt the need to split off and project outside of ourselves. And that alternative is the Holy Spirit, the Reminder of the true innocence we share with everyone else, as we let go of the need to make differences real. And so the wall between the right mind and the wrong mind that we have attempted to make impenetrable with the second split begins to become more porous, allowing more of the light of the right mind to shine on the darkness of the wrong mind, revealing increasingly its illusory nature.
The undoing of these three splits is the focus of the Course's teachings and it involves a process that will require great willingness on our part over time, for the self we are identified with in the world -- the result of the fourth split -- will lose its meaning and appeal to us over time as we practice the forgiveness that healing the splits requires. But along the way, that shift engenders tremendous fear so long as we still have an investment in the separation and in our separate, unique, individual self being real.
At the end of the process, once we have allowed the barrier we have imposed between the right mind and the wrong mind to dissolve completely in the light of total forgiveness, we will be in the real world, still aware of the dream of separation but completely unaffected by it. And it is from this place of complete healing that we are ready for the undoing of the first split, accomplished by what the Course metaphorically refers to as God's last step (e.g., T.7.I), in which He lifts us up out of the illusion of duality and returns us to the absolute oneness of Heaven, which in reality we have never left.
Although the process of undoing the splits is described here as if it were linear, in reality it is not, as the miracle, or the holy instant, which is involved in undoing the second, third and fourth splits, occurs outside of time and space. And so our experience will be that we will be moving back and forth between the various levels of the splits over and over again, over time. For example, the Holy Spirit may seem to be a part of our healing process almost from the beginning of our work with the Course, yet we will not really understand the nature of His reality until we have come to understand the nature of the split mind more fully. And despite our increasing recognition that our only real choice is made in the mind, we will continue to get caught in our victim scripts in the world and will need to remind ourselves that we are really the same as all our brothers and sisters.
Those interested in a more in-depth exploration of the four splits may find the tape set, Separation and Forgiveness: The Four Splits and Their Undoing, and volume I, "All Are Called," from the two-volume book set, The Message of A Course in Miracles (both publications by Kenneth Wapnick) helpful. Q #175: The following three questions all address the issue of death and so will be answered together:i: I would like to know more about "death solves nothing."ii: It is common for us to say when a person dies that he or she is finally "at peace." Does death of the ego not release us from it’s fear based thinking and grant us peace?iii: Would you kindly explain what A Course in Miracles teaches regarding finding peace after death?
A: Since everyone in this world suffers the excruciating pain of believing they are separated from their true Home and their Creator, there are times throughout one’s life that the thought of escape from this pain would seem to be a blessing. In this instance, death represents escape from our pain. And yet, A Course in Miracles teaches us that we are not our bodies: "The body is the symbol of what you think you are. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist (T.6.V.A.2:2,3). Therefore we need not escape from our bodies, whether they be physical, psychological, emotional, astral, etc. What we do need to escape from, however, is the thought of separation, and this is accomplished through the process of forgiveness. If the mind has not been totally healed of the thought of separation once the body "dies," the unforgiveness that it holds will be played out in other times and other forms until forgiveness is perfected. "When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you will know that you will last forever. Perhaps you think this is accomplished through death, but nothing is accomplished through death, because death is nothing" (T.6.V.A.1:1,2).At other times, we are may believe this world to be a spiritual testing ground, and death symbolizes an end to our testing, and our ticket back Home. Or we may believe that once we die, our egos are automatically transcended, and we will be at peace. Beliefs such as this tempt one to want death to come sooner rather than later. "There is a risk of thinking death is peace, because the world equates the body with the Self which God created" (T.27.VII.10:2). It is important to keep in mind that the "death of the ego" does not come from the body’s death, but rather from the process of forgiveness, which only occurs within the mind. And, our bodies may die with or without completing this process. You can see in any of this instances how we are tempted to attribute pain to our body rather than to our mind. Once we have learned where the real problem lies, the Holy Spirit can begin to use our body to teach us our true identity as a mind: "The Holy Spirit, as always, takes what you have made [the body] and translates it into a learning device....He reinterprets what the ego uses as an argument for separation into a demonstration against it (T.6.V.A.2:4,5).So death (which is nothing) of the body (also nothing) solves nothing (the thought of separation, another nothing). Nothing plus nothing equals nothing!
 With Gratitude,Marcy
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Collective Experiences and with whom you look at them
You can hear a sample clip there.
Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.??"The text of?A Course in Miracles?states that consciousness “was the first split introduced into the mind after the separation, making the mind a perceiver rather than a creator” (T-3.IV.2:1). In the clarification of terms it is described as "the receptive mechanism, receiving messages from above or below; from the Holy Spirit or the ego" (C-1.3). Consciousness, thus, is presented in this 2012 Workshop not as a structure, but as part of the process of our leaving the realm of Oneness and going to the realm of duality, and then going from duality back to Oneness through the right-minded use of consciousness. Guided by our Teacher, we learn to use the symbols of consciousness to help ourselves and others get beyond consciousness back to Oneness. When we have chosen against the wrong-minded ego permanently, we are the Atonement too. And so we are that same symbol of the Love of God that Jesus is.??
You have need to use the symbols of the world a while.… They become but means by which you can communicate in ways the world can understand, but which you recognize is not the unity where true communication can be found."
With Appreciation,
Marcy
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Hi.?
Ken did a lecture called. “The Dawn of Consciousness” which can be got from the FACIM site. I had the same queries. So found this helpful.?
x
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Collective Experiences and with whom you look at them
On Tuesday, November 12, 2024 at 07:30:16 PM CST, carolehartigan <hart@...> wrote:
In this Oneness, God Is,? my question is:? Is there Consciousness??
***Not with a capital C which denotes God/ Heaven/ Christ/Oneness***? ?Is God conscious? Not going on the premise that consciousness is the 1st split.?? These words are opposites in ACIM terms.***??Is there consciousness in Heaven? Nope there's no ego split in Heaven.? These words are synonymous in ACIM: God, Christ. Heaven, Love, Peace. Oneness If God was consciousness we'd have to use the word "god" WITH A SMALL "g"? ?IT WOULD BE A SYNONYM FOR ego? ?;-)
In our right mind's here below HEAVEN, do we in fact have consciousness in the Holy Spirit?? Yet it is referred to as only a reflection of HEAVEN.? Is that what is referred to as Christ Consciousness, but still there is my question of before the tmi.?I was just speaking with a dear helper of mine and that question was answered beautifully. We recorded our talk together and? I can share what was said when I get the recording that was made. I want to write down our discussion either way. I just have to transcribe it. Memory wise it is possible I might forget. Give me a week or so. If I dont share it just please remind me. What I can say is that we did have a discussion re: the right mind and how it can be seen as consciousness that will lead to the dissolving of all thoughts. It's just that we hang onto egoic thoughts.?
It seems that consciousness is something that sees something, is aware of something; but still is not IT. Yes, the HS??can help us dissolve barriers to right minded thoughts. Though remember that all thoughts mean nothing.? The ego goes into panic mode (suspicious to vicious) when it senses we may ditch it for the HS. (eventually leading to the dropping ofconcepts)..Our thoughts/concepts can be looked at with the HS and we will observe when the ego goes from suspicious to vicios.Though it's all much ado about nothing. Ego struggles to keep our attention it so it doesn't disappear into the nothingness from which it came.? What I learned today is that one can simply observe the waves of ego response and sit with it. I have been encouraged to sit through that seeming battle where ego knows it is losing and goes from suspicious to vicious.? When the topic came up and i realized my homework was to sit and observe the thoughts and feelinhs which were showing up as feelongs of anxiiety and pains in the body that weren't there moments before...I was encouraged to simply observe the feelings and the thoughts.?
There is no section that I know of that uses the term God consciousness. You will not find that specific concept in ACIM.?
Here in this dream, as a split mind that has two parts, (ego vs. Holy Spirit) do we have that GOD consciousness in the Holy Spirit, yet it is still not HEAVEN/GOD.? I would have said "no" before my discussion today.. My goal is to sit in peace and yet watch when the ego starts going on and on with fearful thoughts, especially the ones that say, "I'll get this right." Ego knows it's days are numbered if we continue in this direction. So when? it distracts us with fear thoughts, feelings of panic and wants us to forget that the natural state of the mind is blank (lesson 8). So it is important to sit through that dark night of the soul. as best one can or simply take breaks as you observe the ego in action.
In his chart, Kenneth illustrates the line above the tmi with words such as? HEAVEN? ?MIND? ?GOD? ?CHRIST? UNITY? ?KNOWLEDGE? ? ? (all beautiful words to describe something that is indescrib able) I am wondering if Kenneth taught that GOD is Consciousness.? ?I don't think Kenneth ever said that GOD 'has' consciousness because GOD couldn't have something that could be gotten.? ?GOD IS.? and GOD doesn't have something outside of WHAT GOD IS (no thoughts whatsoever.? So would it be closer to what Kenneth taught that GOD IS CONSCIOUSNESS? or is consciousness something other than GOD?? ;-
I hope this question and pondering makes sense.? I hear so many teachers talk about consciousness in the right Mind that reflects Holy Spirit, the memory of GOD, and that we all are consciousness in that Mind.
? Do we actually need those answers. In some ways they delay us from getting to the task at hand, which is sitting in the peace of God. When we do this many thoughhts (which are nothing but distractions will come up). Aches and pains and nassea may seem to live in the body. It most likely won't feel good. Bet can we sit with that a little longer to begin to know thoughts are nothing but a way to hold us in prison. Ever since this discussion 2 hours ago I am observing my mind trying to push away what we discussed. I was encouraged to sit with the sensations and? the part of my mind that wants to nopt feel anxious about a decision to sit with the feelings and thopughts. At some point I'll probably forget and move on with my ego day. My practice is to come back to the thoughts, and feelings and for a moment sit peace and watch the resistence that will be coming up for as long as it does. .?
T-23.II.22. Brother, take not one step in the descent to hell. 2 For having taken one, you will not recognize the rest for what they are. 3 And they [will] follow. 4 Attack in any form has placed your foot upon the twisted stairway that leads from Heaven. 5 Yet any instant it is possible to have all this undone. 6 How can you know whether you chose the stairs to Heaven or the way to hell? 7 Quite easily. 8 How do you feel? 9 Is peace in your awareness? 10 Are you certain which way you go? 11 And are you sure the goal of Heaven can be reached? 12 If not, you walk alone. 13 Ask, then, your Friend to join with you, and give you certainty of where you go.?
My new goal is to sit with those thoughts and observe how I feel.
LESSON 8.
My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts. W-8.1. This idea is, of course, the reason why you see only the past. 2 No one really sees anything. 3 He sees only his thoughts projected outward. 4 The mind's preoccupation with the past is the cause of the misconception about time from which your seeing suffers. 5 Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is. 6 It therefore cannot understand time, and cannot, in fact, understand anything. W-8.2. The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. 2 To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions. 3 Very few have realized what is actually entailed in picturing the past or in anticipating the future. 4 The mind is actually blank when it does this, because it is not really thinking about anything. W-8.3. The purpose of the exercises for today is to begin to train your mind to recognize when it is not really thinking at all. 2 While thoughtless ideas preoccupy your mind, the truth is blocked. 3 Recognizing that your mind has been merely blank, rather than believing that it is filled with real ideas, is the first step to opening the way to vision. W-8.4. The exercises for today should be done with eyes closed. 2 This is because you actually cannot see anything, and it is easier to recognize that no matter how vividly you may picture a thought, you are not seeing anything. 3 With as little investment as possible, search your mind for the usual minute or so, merely noting the thoughts you find there. 4 Name each one by the central figure or theme it contains, and pass on to the next. 5 Introduce the practice period by saying:?
6 I seem to be thinking about ___.
W-8.5. Then name each of your thoughts specifically, for example:?
2 I seem to be thinking about [name of a person], about [name of an object], about [name of an emotion],?
and so on, concluding at the end of the mind-searching period with:?
3 But my mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.
But I seem to be delving into a space of experiencing consciousness in a space that is abstract and very silent and It has no thoughts; it's an empty 'no thing' experience; no thoughts are there but I'm conscious of the 'nothingness, which is expansively 'all',? ?and I wonder if this is another word for CONSCIOUSNESS.? ?
Perhaps no synonym is fine. ;-)? It's just another thought ;-)? ;-)
Just keep in mind this is not step one in our looking within. If we want to escape from sitting with peace and those? distractions keep popping up the practice can be sitting with the thoughts that are not of the HS and observing. One can observe running from the thoughts or sitting with the thoughts peacefully It's all good.
T-12.I.8. By applying the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the reactions of others more and more consistently, you will gain an increasing awareness that His criteria are equally applicable to you. 2 For to recognize fear is not enough to escape from it, although the recognition is necessary to demonstrate the need for escape. 3 The Holy Spirit must still translate the fear into truth. 4 If you were left with the fear, once you had recognized it, you would have taken a step away from reality, not towards it. 5 Yet we have repeatedly emphasized the need to recognize fear and face it without disguise as a crucial step in the undoing of the ego. 6 Consider how well the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the motives of others will serve you then. 7 Having taught you to accept only loving thoughts in others and to regard everything else as an appeal for help, He has taught you that fear itself is an appeal for help. 8 This is what recognizing fear really means. 9 If you do not protect it, He will reinterpret it. 10 That is the ultimate value in learning to perceive attack as a call for love. 11 We have already learned that fear and attack are inevitably associated. 12 If only attack produces fear, and if you see attack as the call for help that it is, the unreality of fear must dawn on you. 13 For fear [is] a call for love, in unconscious recognition of what has been denied.
T-18.IX.2. Be you not separate, for the One Who does surround it has brought union to you, returning your little offering of darkness to the eternal light. 2 How is this done? 3 It is extremely simple, being based on what this little kingdom really is. 4 The barren sands, the darkness and the lifelessness, are seen only through the body's eyes. 5 Its bleak sight is distorted, and the messages it transmits to you who made it to limit your awareness are little and limited, and so fragmented they are meaningless.
T-18.IX.3. From the world of bodies, made by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind that made it. 2 And these messages bear witness to this world, pronouncing it as true. 3 For you sent forth these messengers to bring this back to you. 4 Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. 5 There are no messages that speak of what lies underneath, for it is not the body that could speak of this. 6 Its eyes perceive it not; its senses remain quite unaware of it; its tongue cannot relay its messages. 7 Yet God can bring you there, if you are willing to follow the Holy Spirit through seeming terror, trusting Him not to abandon you and leave you there. 8 For it is not His purpose to frighten you, but only yours. 9 You are severely tempted to abandon Him at the outside ring of fear, but He would lead you safely through and far beyond.
T-18.IX.4. The circle of fear lies just below the level the body sees, and seems to be the whole foundation on which the world is based. 2 Here are all the illusions, all the twisted thoughts, all the insane attacks, the fury, the vengeance and betrayal that were made to keep the guilt in place, so that the world could rise from it and keep it hidden. 3 Its shadow rises to the surface, enough to hold its most external manifestations in darkness, and to bring despair and loneliness to it and keep it joyless. 4 Yet its intensity is veiled by its heavy coverings, and kept apart from what was made to keep it hidden. 5 The body cannot see this, for the body arose from this for its protection, which depends on keeping it not seen. 6 The body's eyes will never look on it. 7 Yet they will see what it dictates.
T-18.IX.5. The body will remain guilt's messenger, and will act as it directs as long as you believe that guilt is real. 2 For the reality of guilt is the illusion that seems to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a real foundation for the ego's thought system. 3 Its thinness and transparency are not apparent until you see the light behind it. 4 And then you see it as a fragile veil before the light.?
T-18.IX.6. This heavy-seeming barrier, this artificial floor that looks like rock, is like a bank of low dark clouds that seem to be a solid wall before the sun. 2 Its impenetrable appearance is wholly an illusion. 3 It gives way softly to the mountain tops that rise above it, and has no power at all to hold back anyone willing to climb above it and see the sun. 4 It is not strong enough to stop a button's fall, nor hold a feather. 5 Nothing can rest upon it, for it is but an illusion of a foundation. 6 Try but to touch it and it disappears; attempt to grasp it and your hands hold nothing.
T-18.IX.7. Yet in this cloud bank it is easy to see a whole world rising. 2 A solid mountain range, a lake, a city, all rise in your imagination, and from the clouds the messengers of your perception return to you, assuring you that it is there. 3 Figures stand out and move about, actions seem real, and forms appear and shift from loveliness to the grotesque. 4 And back and forth they go, as long as you would play the game of children's make-believe. 5 Yet however long you play it, and regardless of how much imagination you bring to it, you do not confuse it with the world below, nor seek to make it real.
T-18.IX.8. So should it be with the dark clouds of guilt, no more impenetrable and no more substantial. 2 You will not bruise yourself against them in traveling through. 3 Let your Guide teach you their unsubstantial nature as He leads you past them, for beneath them is a world of light whereon they cast no shadows. 4 Their shadows lie upon the world beyond them, still further from the light. 5 Yet from them to the light their shadows cannot fall.
T-18.IX.9. This world of light, this circle of brightness is the real world, where guilt meets with forgiveness. 2 Here the world outside is seen anew, without the shadow of guilt upon it. 3 Here are you forgiven, for here you have forgiven everyone. 4 Here is the new perception, where everything is bright and shining with innocence, washed in the waters of forgiveness, and cleansed of every evil thought you laid upon it. 5 Here there is no attack upon the Son of God, and you are welcome. 6 Here is your innocence, waiting to clothe you and protect you, and make you ready for the final step in the journey inward. 7 Here are the dark and heavy garments of guilt laid by, and gently replaced by purity and love. T-18.IX.10. Yet even forgiveness is not the end. 2 Forgiveness does make lovely, but it does not create. p395 3 It is the source of healing, but it is the messenger of love and not its Source. 4 Here you are led, that God Himself can take the final step unhindered, for here does nothing interfere with love, letting it be itself. 5 A step beyond this holy place of forgiveness, a step still further inward but the one [you] cannot take, transports you to something completely different. 6 Here is the Source of light; nothing perceived, forgiven nor transformed. 7 But merely known. T-18.IX.11. This course will lead to knowledge, but knowledge itself is still beyond the scope of our curriculum. 2 Nor is there any need for us to try to speak of what must forever lie beyond words. 3 We need remember only that whoever attains the real world, beyond which learning cannot go, will go beyond it, but in a different way. 4 Where learning ends there God begins, for learning ends before Him Who is complete where He begins, and where there [is] no end. 5 It is not for us to dwell on what cannot be attained. 6 There is too much to learn. 7 The readiness for knowledge still must be attained. T-18.IX.12. Love is not learned. 2 Its meaning lies within itself. 3 And learning ends when you have recognized all it is [not.] 4 That is the interference; that is what needs to be undone. 5 Love is not learned, because there never was a time in which you knew it not. 6 Learning is useless in the Presence of your Creator, Whose acknowledgment of you and yours of Him so far transcend all learning that everything you learned is meaningless, replaced forever by the knowledge of love and its one meaning. T-18.IX.13. Your relationship with your brother has been uprooted from the world of shadows, and its unholy purpose has been safely brought through the barriers of guilt, washed with forgiveness, and set shining and firmly rooted in the world of light. 2 From there it calls to you to follow the course it took, lifted high above the darkness and gently placed before the gates of Heaven. 3 The holy instant in which you and your brother were united is but the messenger of love, sent from beyond forgiveness to remind you of all that lies beyond it. 4 Yet it is through forgiveness that it will be remembered.
T-18.IX.14. And when the memory of God has come to you in the holy place of forgiveness you will remember nothing else, and memory will be as useless as learning, for your only purpose will be creating. 2 Yet this you cannot know until every perception has been cleansed and purified, and finally removed forever. 3 Forgiveness removes only the untrue, lifting the shadows from the world and carrying it, safe and sure within its gentleness, to the bright world of new and clean perception. p396 4 There is your purpose [now.] 5 And it is there that peace awaits you.
thanks for any of your mind's thoughts on consciousness
Humbly, Carole H.
thanks as well for your questions on consciousness
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Re: Collective Experiences and with whom you look at them
What is going now is a huge classroom with many opportunities to practice seeing the call for love, as long as we stay with J. Grateful to the Course and its community. Sorry about your pup, but my goodness 18-20 years to be together is a blessing. The oldest I have had is 12??
Thanks again?
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Hi Marcy and Everyone,
I just found this gem. Consciousness is the first split so it appears that Consciousness is not what God/Heaven is.
carole h
Exactly. Please note that the ego and H.S. are completely separate. You align with one or the other at any given time. They don't interact, which is not what the pathways of light appears to suggest.
With Appreciation.
Marcy?
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Subject: Consciousness
According to ACIM, This continues to explain consciousness.
This makes sense to me when reminded that ‘Knowledge’ is beyond consciousness and perceptions.
Thank you again for bearing with me into this exploration of consciousness.
caroleh.
Carole, thanks for bringing this up.
With Appreciation,
Marcy
Hi Carole (and all)
You figured it out all on your own. Though the choice for ego tries to muddle fuddle duddle things doesn't it?.? ;-) You might look up in the D.U. search box "Can the ego learn?" If you look for it and find it could you possibly post it to the group? That is an interesting read as well
Consciousness is the 1st split/separation/duality.
The piece you provided below is from Pathways of Light, seems to differ from what Ken is saying . The reason we use one version is to decrease the confusion as we definitely want to remain consistent in our studies.?
I honestly don't believe the Course's goal is to teach us to train our consciousness (ego/thoughts of separation) to receive the messages of the Holy Spirit. They are opposites/duality. A choice has to be made between the Holy Spirit or the ego AND IT'S ALREADY DONE.? ;-)? ;-)
What is the goal of ACIM?
The goal of?A Course in Miracles?is not the dissolution of the separated self, but only the dissolution of the?wrong-minded aspect of this ego self,?leaving the individual self in a state of happiness and peace: This course has explicitly stated that its goal for you is happiness and peace?
(T-13.11.7:1).Forget not that the motivation for this course is the attainment and the keeping of the state of peace. Given this state the mind is quiet, and the condition in which God is remembered is attained (T-24.in.1:1-2). The self is not annihilated; our ego identity simply disappears. The loss of self, of which we are so terrified, is what we believe will be the dissolution of the body, or loss of self-identification, and this comes from our equating the ego with the body, or better, the ego with our self. Yet that personal self-identification is but one of guilt, attack, separation, depression, sickness, loss, and death, and it is only?that?self that goes at first. What therefore remains when we learn to forgive is the right- minded self that ultimately becomes the basis for our being in the real world. At that point, this loss of our individuality is no longer feared but welcomed. This state is beautifully described in the sections "The Forgiven World" (T-17.11) and "Where Sin Has Left" (T-26.IV). In Lesson 155, "I will step back and let Him lead the way," we find perhaps the clearest expression in?A Course in Miracles?of this?gentle?phase of the process of returning to our true Self:There is a way of living in the world that is not here, although it seems to be.?You do not change appearance, though you smile more frequently. Your forehead is serene; your eyes are quiet. And the ones who walk the world as you do recognize their own. Yet those who have not yet perceived the way will recognize you also, and believe that you are like them, as you were before. The lesson continues by discussing the illusory nature of the world whose purpose is to perpetuate the ego's thought system of individuality, and we are asked to make the Holy Spirit's truth our reality while we yet appear to walk this world. It is these illusions about our identity we are asked to give up, not the world itself, so that we may be models for others who have yet to make the same choice:If truth demanded they give up the world, it would appear to them as if it asked the sacrifice of something that is real. Many have chosen to renounce the world while still believing its reality. And they have suffered from a sense of loss, and have not been released accordingly. Others have chosen nothing but the world, and they have suffered from a sense of loss still deeper, which they did not understand.Between these paths there is another road that leads away from loss of every kind, for sacrifice and deprivation both are quickly left behind. This is the way appointed for you now.?You walk this path as others walk, nor do you seem to be distinct from them, although you are indeed. Thus can you serve them while you serve yourself, and set their footsteps on the way that God has opened up to you, and them through you. Illusion still appears to cling to you, that you may reach them. Yet it has stepped back. And it is not illusion that they hear you speak of, nor illusion that you bring their eyes to look on and their minds to grasp. Nor can the truth, which walks ahead of you, speak to them through illusions, for the road leads past illusion now, while on the way you call to them, that they may follow you. This is the attainment of the right-minded self, where the student still experiences an individuality, albeit now a happy and peaceful one. Yet, the journey is not over, for true unity has not yet been achieved. The thought of the end of the separated self, however, is no longer experienced as threatening, as we just commented on above, for there is no guilt to be cherished and protected.The remainder of this beautiful lesson deals with the journey's close: Yet at the journey's ending there will be no gap, no distance between truth and you.?And all illusions walking in the way you travelled will be gone from you as well, with nothing left to keep the truth apart from God's completion, holy as Himself. Step back in faith and let truth lead the way. You know not where you go. But One Who knows goes with you. Let Him lead you with the rest.When dreams are over, time has closed the door on all the things that pass and miracles are purposeless, the holy Son of God will make no journeys, There will be no wish to be illusion rather than the truth.?And we step forth toward this, as we progress along the way that truth points out to us.?This is our final journey, which we make for everyone. We must not lose our way. For as truth goes before us, so it goes before our brothers who will follow us.... Your feet are safely set upon the road that leads the world to God. Look not to ways that seem to lead you elsewhere. Dreams are not a worthy guide for you who are God's Son. Forget not He has placed His Hand in yours, and given you your brothers in His trust that you are worthy of His trust in you. He cannot be deceived. His trust has made your pathway certain and your goal secure. You will not fail your brothers nor your Self (W-pl.155.1, 4-6, 10-11, 13; italics mine). In conclusion, therefore, we can say that the goal of?A Course in Miracles?is the transformation of the ego self and the attainment of the real world, not the transcendence of the self and return to Heaven. Actually, the term "self " at the end of "The Closing of the Gap" could even be spelled with a capital "S." This same point of Jesus' goal for us in his Course is made in some beautiful passages in "The Lifting of the Veil," to which we now return [i.e.: in the next chapter of the book - #15] .?
Carole wrote: This makes sense to me when reminded that ‘Knowledge’ is beyond consciousness and perceptions.?
Thank you again for bearing with me into this exploration of consciousness.
caroleh?
Carole, thanks for bringing this up.
With Appreciation,
Marcy
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LESSON 318. In me salvation's means and end are one.
LESSON 318. In me salvation's means and end are one.
(1) In me, God's holy Son, are reconciled all parts of Heaven's plan to save the world. What could conflict, when all the parts have but one purpose and one aim? How could there be a single part that stands alone, or one of more or less importance than the rest? I am the means by which God's Son is saved, because salvation's purpose is to find the sinlessness that God has placed in me. I was created as the thing I seek. I am the goal the world is searching for. I am God's Son, His one eternal Love. I am salvation's means and end as well.
(2) <Let me today, my Father, take the role You offer me in Your request that I accept Atonement for myself. For thus does what is thereby reconciled in me become as surely reconciled to You.>
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Below, is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries on this lesson, from "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be purchased at the following site: ~ M. Street.
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LESSON 318. "In me salvation's means and end are one."
This title recalls the lovely statement at the end of Lesson 302: "He the End we seek, and He the Means by which we go to Him." In that lesson, God is both the Means and End. In this lesson, <we> are the means and end -- the end is God's Son as Christ, and the means of reaching Him is God's Son's choosing to forgive himself.
(1:1) "In me, God's holy Son, are reconciled all parts of Heaven's plan to save the world."
Traditional Christian theology has taught that the Son of God -- Jesus -- was the one who reconciled sinful man to God's Love. Thus Jesus takes the same idea and applies it to God's Son in all of us. This Son is not the magical figure named Jesus Christ who came into the world to atone for our sin through his suffering and sacrificial death. Rather, it is God's Son -- again, <all of us> -- who reconciles God's Son to himself. This means that <we> undo the belief in sin, the prerequisite to realizing our oneness with God.
(1:2-3) "What could conflict, when all the parts have but one purpose and one aim? How could there be a single part that stands alone, or one of more or less importance than the rest?"
The <parts> refer to the seeming fragments of the Sonship. Elsewhere in the Course, refers to these as <aspects> (e.g.,T-13.VI.6:4). The value of using neutral terms such as <parts> or <aspects> is that it emphasizes that God's Son is not only homo sapiens, for every separated fragment -- animate or inanimate -- is a fragmentary shadow of the one sleeping Son. Each part of the Sonship shares one purpose and goal, which marks the end of separation's specialness. As you go through your day, therefore, try to see how often you take sides and judge the parts of God's Son as better or worse or less important, more or less spiritual. And then ask Jesus to help you see the inherent sameness in God's one Son.
(1:4-8) "I am the means by which God's Son is saved, because salvation's purpose is to find the sinlessness that God has placed in me. I was created as the thing I seek. I am the goal the world is searching for. I am God's Son, His one eternal Love. I am salvation's means and end as well."
The <end> is to realize I am God's Son as Christ, and the <means> of attainment is to see God's Son in everyone, including myself, recognizing our single purpose and goal. Seeing at last that we share one Self. Thus, I <am> God's Son, and I <seek> God's Son.
(2:1) "Let me today, my Father, take the role You offer me in Your request that I accept Atonement for myself."
Strictly speaking, it is not God Who makes this request, but Jesus or the Holy Spirit -- our Teachers of forgiveness.
(2:2) "For thus does what is thereby reconciled in me become as surely reconciled to You."
We become one through forgiveness, the meaning of <reconciled>: one as God's separated Son, one as Christ, at one with His Source.
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10. What Is the Last Judgment?
Christ's Second Coming gives the Son of God this gift: to hear the Voice for God proclaim that what is false is false, and what is true has never changed. And this the judgment is in which perception ends. At first you see a world that has accepted this as true, projected from a now corrected mind. And with this holy sight, perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done.
The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless.
You who believed that God's Last Judgment would condemn the world to hell along with you, accept this holy truth: God's Judgment is the gift of the Correction He bestowed on all your errors, freeing you from them, and all effects they ever seemed to have. To fear God's saving grace is but to fear complete release from suffering, return to peace, security and happiness, and union with your own Identity.
God's Final Judgment is as merciful as every step in His appointed plan to bless His Son, and call him to return to the eternal peace He shares with him. Be not afraid of love. For it alone can heal all sorrow, wipe away all tears, and gently waken from his dream of pain the Son whom God acknowledges as His. Be not afraid of this. Salvation asks you give it welcome. And the world awaits your glad acceptance, which will set it free.
This is God's Final Judgment: "You are still My holy Son, forever innocent, forever loving and forever loved, as limitless as your Creator, and completely changeless and forever pure. Therefore awaken and return to Me. I am your Father and you are My Son.
Love and Blessings,
Lyn Johnson 719-369-1822
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Re: Collective Experiences and with whom you look at them
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Here's a Q & A with a listing of some other Q & As related to your topic. You might check out to see if I posted any of them as well on the D.U. site.
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From the pdf Questions and Answers at FACIM (with permission to post from The Foundation of A Course in Miracles. Hig ?? astericks?are mine):
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Q #1118:?I've heard Ken Wapnick often say that God doesn't know we are here. How then can the quotes below be explained??
“His Word assures us that He loves the world. God's Word has promised that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. ...Yet has God's Judgment on this distorted world redeemed it and made it fit to welcome peace” (M.11.1:6,7,8,9,10,11;4:6).?
“God turns to you for help to save the world” (M.29.8:2).?
“You have projected outward what is antagonistic to what is inward, and therefore you would have to perceive it this way. That is why you must realize that your hatred is in your mind and not outside it before you can get rid of it; and why you must get rid of it before you can perceive the world as it really is” (T.12.III.7:9,10).?
“The world as you perceive it cannot have been created by the Father, for the world is not as you see it” (T.11.VII.1:1).?
“Now is the question different. It is no longer, ‘Can peace be possible in this world?' but instead, ‘Is it not impossible that peace be absent here?'” (M.11.4:11,12).?
“To perceive anew is merely to perceive again, implying that before, or in the interval between, you were not perceiving at all. What, then, is the world that awaits your perception when you see it?” (T.11.VII.1:5,6).?
“The world the holy see is beautiful because they see their innocence in it” (T.20.III.6:3).?
“This loveliness is not a fantasy. It is the real world, bright and clean and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun” (T.17.II.2:1,2).?
“The altar of God where Christ abideth is there. You have defiled the altar, but not the world. ...Bring your perceptions of the world to this altar, for it is the altar to truth. There you will see your vision changed, and there you will learn to see truly. From this place, where God and His Son dwell in peace and where you are welcome, you will look out in peace and behold the world truly” (T.12.III.10:3,4,6,7,8).?
A:?Although there is certainly much in?A Course in Miracles?that would?seem?to say otherwise, the Course's foundational metaphysical principles, if truly understood, make it very clear that ***God is abstract and not personal.*** For example, early in the text, in a discussion about how the ego arose, Jesus makes the following observation about knowledge, which is a term the Course uses to refer to our perfectly unified reality in God, or Heaven, in contrast to the realm of perception, which is the ego's invention:?“Abstract thought applies to knowledge because?knowledge is completely impersonal?, and examples [ i.e., specifics ] are irrelevant to its understanding. ***Perception, however, is always specific, and therefore quite concrete”*** (T.4.II.1:4,5, italics added ).?
The personal -- and interpersonal -- can only arise out of a thought of separation, where there can seem to be a specific self and a separate specific other -- an observer and an observed?.?“Ego illusions are quite specific, although?the mind is naturally abstract?. ***Part of the mind becomes concrete, however, when it splits.*** The concrete part believes in the ego, because the ego depends on the concrete. The ego is the part of the mind that believes your existence is defined by separation” (T.4.VII.1:2,3,4,5 , italics added ). The Course identifies both consciousness and perception as the result of the thought of separation. “颁辞苍蝉肠颈辞耻蝉苍别蝉蝉,?the level of perception,?was the first split introduced into the mind after the separation, making the mind a perceiver rather than a creator. Consciousness is correctly identified as the domain of the ego” (T.3.IV.2:1,2).?Clearly then, consciousness and perception cannot be states or abilities of the true God as the Course characterizes God.?
The oneness that is our reality, as the Course repeats in many different ways across many, many passages, simply cannot recognize separation nor the resulting illusory specifics and differences. Nor can the mind that has made separation real remember and understand its true, nonspecific, unified nature. “Complete abstraction is the natural condition of the mind. But part of it is now unnatural. It does not look on everything as one. It sees instead but fragments of the whole, for only thus could it invent the partial world you see....." One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth. Yet do these thoughts make clear the meaning of creation? Do these words bring perfect clarity with them to you? What can they seem to be but empty sounds; pretty, perhaps, correct in sentiment, yet fundamentally not understood nor understandable. ***The mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp abstraction in the sense that it is all- encompassing (W.161.2:1,2,3,4; 4:1,2,3,4,5,6,7).***? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ??
So God does not know we are here, that is, He does not?perceive?that we are here, because the knowledge inherent in God as perfect Oneness is impersonal, nonspecific, and non-perceptual.?If there could be any sense in which God knew that we are here, He would have to be a separate, personal God, capable of perceiving us as separate from Him, and we would in fact have to be separate from Him -- all contradictions of the Course's basic teachings on the nature of God and reality. So, as a matter of clarification,?even referring to God as He or Him, as the Course does throughout, confers a Personhood upon Him that can only be a fiction.?
If all of this is true, the question remains, why is so much of the Course, such as the passages you cite, written in a way that seems to suggest that the separation is real, that God exists apart from us, as a Person Who perceives His children as existing independent of Him in a world that can be perceived outside Him and that He seems to care about? Why is the Course presented this way, if the words contradict what the Course is saying about the nature of our reality and God's -- perfect oneness??
This question has been addressed both briefly and in depth across a number of answers on this service (e.g., Questions?,?,?,?,,,,?,,?,??,?,?,?).
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But let us examine it once again, perhaps pulling everything together in a little bit different way.?Invested as we are in believing that we are creatures of separation, we only understand duality. Everything in our experience reinforces our belief in separation and so simply to be told it is all illusion -- that the world, and the selves we believe we are, are not real, so get over it! -- would not be particularly helpful. Rather we need a teaching that addresses us where we believe we are, for with our self-imposed, finite split minds, we cannot comprehend infinite oneness. And in fact, if the infinite, impersonal Oneness that the Course refers to as God had been the Course's primary emphasis, it would most likely arouse more fear and anxiety in our minds than it already does now, as we begin to grasp, when we are ready, its deeper implications.?
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We first need to be taught that our experience of separation and duality is based on belief and not fact so that we can begin to question the validity of all our interpretations of our experience and allow our investment in them to be undone. In particular, all of our interpretations that lead us to conclude that we or others are victims of persons and events outside our control need to be reconsidered.?The Course's approach to teaching this is a powerful demonstration of one of the Course's major emphases -- that?what needs to change is not the dualistic form of the illusion we believe in but the purpose we give it.?For duality is not the problem in itself. The problem is our?belief?in it and, in particular, the purpose for which we have been using it - to keep ourselves believing we are sinful and guilty and consequently beyond gentle correction and genuine healing.?So the first step is not to deny or negate duality, but to give it a different purpose -- to begin to use the symbols of separation to undo our belief in separation. And that is what the Course does.?
This approach is brilliantly demonstrated in the Course's use of Christian terms and symbolism for a different purpose from that given to them by traditional Christianity. To understand the Course's correction, we first must understand what we have chosen to believe about this made-up dualistic God and our relationship with Him. For accepting the separation as real,?we have also accepted an incredible dualistic myth about God as Someone separate from us Who wants to punish us because of our sin against Him in choosing to turn against His Love and reject the paradise He has made for us.?All of us who believe we are here in the world must believe we have really accomplished the separation, thereby victimizing this otherwise all-powerful God. And so He must seek revenge, beginning by banishing us from the paradise He conditionally gave us. Incorporated into this myth of separation and sin are overwhelming feelings of guilt and fear, which keep us from seeing clearly what we have foolishly?chosen?to believe.?
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Christianity represents a vivid demonstration of the ego's separation-based religion that accepts sin and victimhood as real and presents the only resolution, called?God's?plan, as requiring the brutal murder of His only Son. Specifically, God's plan calls for His pure and innocent Son to take on a body so that he can be tortured and killed as a sacrifice, in order to compensate or atone for our evil, victimizing thoughts and deeds against God, and appease His otherwise boundless wrath. Why God can only be satisfied by a sacrificial death is never explained but simply accepted as the truth. Over and over again, traditional Christianity emphasizes that our sins have been washed away by the Son's redeeming blood. Bizarre as it may sound when presented without any additional context, there is little doubt that Christianity's basic tenets continue to hold sway over many minds in the Western world. Its far-reaching appeal lies in the fact that it reinforces the underlying ego thought system, upon which our personal identities and the existence of the world depend. And it has the added appeal of saying that God is a separate Individual Who acknowledges and reacts to separation and sin, conferring a sacred legitimacy on the entire ego enterprise.?
The Course comes as a correction for these strange beliefs, using the same dualistic forms, speaking symbolically of God as a separate individual Person -- our Father -- while addressing our belief that we have attacked Him through our desire for separation.?The correction remains within a dualistic framework while our fear of oneness and the loss of self is too powerful, assuring us that our Father only loves us, that we can only seem to attack God, ourselves and each other in our feverish imagination, and that the world we have made is simply an outpicturing of our own foolishly misguided and mistaken thoughts of separation and sin and guilt.?
If we allow?His Holy Spirit?to correct our misperceptions, we will begin to experience the world in a completely different light, while we continue to believe the world is separate from us and real. And we will begin to recognize that all of our experiences represent a choice we have made in our own minds about how we want to feel. In the end, when all of our ego perceptions of attack and blame will have been corrected, we will know that the external world, as well as the self we have believed we are, is not real. This healed perception is what the Course calls the real world, a state of mind in which all sin and guilt have been undone. It is the transitional state, still within the ego-derived perceptual realm, that precedes the return to knowledge/God/Heaven.?There are many passages that make it clear that the real world is still an illusion and therefore not real, despite its name. We will conclude with a number of passages that should offer a correction for any strictly dualistic interpretation of the passages that you have cited, and should also make it abundantly clear that the Course's dualistic language is only metaphorical and is not to be taken literally.?
“He [?the Son?] always perceives this world as outside himself, for this is crucial to his adjustment. He does not realize that he makes this world, for there is no world outside of him. If only the loving thoughts of God's Son are the world's reality, the real world must be in his mind” (T.12.III.6:6,7; 7:1).?
“The real world is the second part of the hallucination time and death are real, and have existence that can be perceived” (T.26.V.12:3).?
“The real world still is but a dream. Except the figures have been changed. They are not seen as idols which betray (T.29.IX.7:1,2,3).?
“The real world is the state of mind in which the only purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness” (T.30.V.1:1).?
“?Wrong-mindedness?listens to the ego and makes illusions; perceiving sin and justifying anger, and seeing guilt, disease and death as real. Both this world and the real world are illusions because right-mindedness merely overlooks, or forgives, what never happened. Therefore it is not the?One-mindedness?of the Christ Mind, Whose Will is One with God's” (C.1.6).?
“There is a borderland of thought that stands between this world and Heaven. It is not a place, and when you reach it is apart from time. ...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 (T.26.III.2:1,2; 3:2,3,4,5).?
“Perception will be meaningless when it has been perfected, for?everything that has been used for learning will have no function. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible will still occur. The perception of the real world will be so short that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world and have been made ready for Him. The real world is attained simply by the complete forgiveness of the old, the world you see without forgiveness” (T.17.II.4:2,3,4,5;5:1).?
“This course will lead to knowledge, but knowledge itself is still beyond the scope of our curriculum. ... We need remember only that whoever attains the real world, beyond which learning cannot go, will go beyond it, but in a different way”?(T.18.IX.11:1,3).?
??“For as Heaven and earth become one, even the real world will vanish from your sight. The end of the world is not its destruction, but its translation into Heaven. The reinterpretation of the world is the transfer of all perception to knowledge”?(T.11.VIII.1:7,8,9).
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Lastly:
INTRODUCTION
T-in.1.?This is a course in miracles. 2 It is a required course. 3 Only the time you take it is voluntary. 4 Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. 5 It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time.?6 The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. 7 It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. 8 The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.
T-in.2.?This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:
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2 Nothing real can be threatened.
3 Nothing unreal exists.
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4 Herein lies the peace of God.
From lesson 8:
LESSON 8.
My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.
W-8.1. ? ?This idea is, of course, the reason why you see only the past. 2 No one really sees anything. 3 He sees only his thoughts projected outward. 4 The mind's preoccupation with the past is the cause of the misconception about time from which your seeing suffers. 5 Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is. 6 It therefore cannot understand time, and cannot, in fact, understand anything.
W-8.2.? ?*** The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. 2 To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions. 3 Very few have realized what is actually entailed in picturing the past or in anticipating the future. 4 The mind is actually blank when it does this, because it is not really thinking about anything.***
W-8.3. ? ?The purpose of the exercises for today is to begin to train your mind to recognize when it is not really thinking at all. 2 While thoughtless ideas preoccupy your mind, the truth is blocked. 3 Recognizing that your mind has been merely blank, rather than believing that it is filled with real ideas, is the first step to opening the way to vision.
W-8.4. ? ?The exercises for today should be done with eyes closed. 2 This is because you actually cannot see anything, and it is easier to recognize that no matter how vividly you may picture a thought, you are not seeing anything. 3 With as little investment as possible, search your mind for the usual minute or so, merely noting the thoughts you find there. 4 Name each one by the central figure or theme it contains, and pass on to the next. 5 Introduce the practice period by saying:?
6 I seem to be thinking about ___.
W-8.5. ? ?Then name each of your thoughts specifically, for example:?
2 I seem to be thinking about [name of a person], about [name of an object], about [name of an emotion],?
and so on, concluding at the end of the mind-searching period with:?
3 But my mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.
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