A Course in Miracles Workbook Daily Lesson 347, Year 2022

ACIM Daily Lesson 347 Anger must come from judgment. Judgment is the weapon I would use against myself, to keep the miracle away from me.

Photo by John Gardiner of Whangarei, New Zealand 

Lesson 347

Anger must come from judgment. Judgment is the weapon I would use against myself, to keep the miracle away from me.

1. Father, I want what goes against my will, and do not want what is my will to have. ²Straighten my mind, my Father. ³It is sick. ⁴But You have offered freedom, and I choose to claim Your gift today. ⁵And so I give all judgment to the One You gave to me to judge for me. ⁶He sees what I behold, and yet He knows the truth. ⁷He looks on pain, and yet He understands it is not real, and in His understanding it is healed. ⁸He gives the miracles my dreams would hide from my awareness. ⁹Let Him judge today. ¹⁰I do not know my will, but He is sure it is Your Own. ¹¹And He will speak for me, and call Your miracles to come to me.

2. Listen today. ²Be very still, and hear the gentle Voice for God assuring you that He has judged you as the Son He loves.

I used to be very judgmental of myself, and so I judged others. When I judged others, I would then judge myself. It was quite a destructive closed cycle, but I knew I had to break it. I discovered that the way out is to recognize that I cannot judge. Judging requires more information than I have. On the other hand, the Holy Spirit has that information and can judge accurately. I have the Holy Spirit in my mind, and so I can ask for His judgment.  

Because the Holy Spirit knows who we are, He will always judge us as innocent and holy.

If I judge otherwise, I will be lying to myself, and this will prevent me from experiencing the miracle of healed mind. I don’t remember who I am, so I don’t remember my own will, which is the will of God. The Holy Spirit does remember and will help me if I ask Him to straighten my mind and judge for me.

I am being reminded that I can listen to the ego’s voice about myself and about my brothers. Or, I can listen to the Voice for God to learn the truth. It is up to me, and I will be angry or joyful according to the voice I choose. I am done with anger and fear, so I have decided to stop judging with the ego. When I notice judgmental thoughts in my mind, I immediately release them to the Holy Spirit for correction. As a result, I seldom experience anger anymore, and I never keep it if I do.

My mind is being purified of ego thinking, and I am so much happier and more peaceful than I have ever been. Perhaps you would like to join me in relinquishing judgment. It is a weapon that we use against ourselves, and we do it to keep the miracle away. This can only happen if we identify with the ego as self because only the ego wants to avoid miracles. We are not the ego, and we can claim our inheritance as children of God when we stop judging. That sounds like a better choice to me.

The miracle of a healed mind is worth anything.

The right to judge is certainly a small price to pay when in return, I receive a profound sense of peace and happiness. And really, how could I judge anyway? In the Manual for Teachers, here is what Jesus says about judgment.

M-10.3. The aim of our curriculum, unlike the goal of the world’s learning, is the recognition that judgment in the usual sense is impossible. 2 This is not an opinion but a fact. 3 In order to judge anything rightly, one would have to be fully aware of an inconceivably wide range of things; past, present and to come. 4 One would have to recognize in advance all the effects of his judgments on everyone and everything involved in them in any way. 5 And one would have to be certain there is no distortion in his perception, so that his judgment would be wholly fair to everyone on whom it rests now and in the future. 6 Who is in a position to do this? 7 Who except in grandiose fantasies would claim this for himself?

I will not attempt to judge.

I will turn my mind to the Holy Spirit, and He will judge for me. This is why I so often asked Him what this is for. What does it mean? How would you have me see it? Show me another way to see this. So, how does the Holy Spirit heal my mind?

When I am ready for healing, I ask the Holy Spirit/Jesus to look with me at the errant thought. The Holy Spirit knows that I believe this thought, but He also understands it is not real. His understanding heals my mind. He will always judge me as the Son God loves. May I always remember this when I think of judging someone, myself, or anyone else.

Regina’s Tips

Regina contemplated two ideas from our special theme. The first is faith. She quoted Bernadette Roberts, who wrote, “Indeed, it is because Truth is unbelievable that man needs faith—faith, which is beyond belief.”

She then posed this question and answered it. What is faith? Faith is trust or confidence in something based on spiritual understanding rather than proof. I have learned that faith is better than seeking proof, primarily because we cannot find proof until we have walked the journey and experienced it for ourselves. As Bernadette also wrote, “Complete understanding can only come at the end of the journey.” That’s because complete understanding comes from direct experience.

My Thoughts about Faith

For some reason, faith has always come easy to me. I am not saying I am gullible, but if I have reason to believe in the one sharing with me, I have faith in what they say. This is the reason I not only read the Course but absolutely believed it. I believed it came from Jesus, and I believe in Jesus. The first part of that sentence, which I believed it came from Jesus, is harder to explain. I simply did.

One of the most frightening ego attacks is to question whether the truth is true. What if all of this is a crock? What if I have decided to dedicate my life in pursuit of a lie? That happened along the way once I reached a certain level in my study. What I did was to remind myself of people I trust who are on the same path.

I would think of Regina, and I would know that she is no fool. I would think of Robert and Mary Stoelting, the founders of Pathways of Light who I trust, and I know they are not foolish.

When my friend, Alisha, awakened, I was witness to the entire process and so could not doubt it. I would think of Cate Grieves, and I trust her awakening. This happened for these people, and I know it did, so I must be real. That would get me through the ego storm and back to sanity. Before I had experienced my own shift, I trusted it was real. Because it happened for others, and I could see that it did, I trusted it would happen to me. Trust opened my mind to the experience.

Regina

The second thing Regina contemplated was this: “because to ask for it implies that the mind has been made ready….” When we ask from a state of readiness, Grace responds.

My Thoughts

At first, I was too uncertain of my place in God to ask directly for what I wanted. I asked for healing because it was clear I needed it, and receiving healing gave me confidence in asking. Next, I realized I was asking as if I were a supplicant approaching, hat in hand. What I discovered is that I am more like royalty, asking for what is mine and expecting it to be given. Or said more clearly, I am Divine, and the Holy Spirit is waiting for me to ask just so that it can be given to me. I have every right to expect an answer.

I had an experience the other day that emphasizes this. For a month or so, I had been in joy, and one day, sitting on my couch, I noticed that I didn’t feel that joy. I wondered what happened. I said out loud, “Hey, where’s my joy?” And, bam! There it was! I laughed out loud, and it still makes me smile to think of it.

I have talked about spiritual aspirations, and I always have one.

This is my way of asking for what is next. My first conscious aspiration was to have the peace of God. I kept that before me, measuring each thought against it. Would this thought bring me the peace of God? If not, I wasn’t interested in it.

Later that aspiration morphed into the desire to awaken. It occurred when I was ready to do so.

Not that it happened at that moment, but with that aspiration guiding me, how could I not awaken? It seems to me, based on my own personal experience, that we must ask for what we want, but then we must do the work to acquire what we want. The asking comes first, though. And the asking isn’t necessarily in words. It is the sincere desire beneath any words that is the real asking.

Regina

Today’s workbook lesson demonstrates asking when it says, “Straighten my mind, my Father.”

Of course, the words themselves are never the prayer. The prayer that moves Grace is the heartfelt readiness and faith that is at the foundation of the prayer. Until one sees for herself how hurtful judgment is, genuinely tires of the judging mind, and has faith that it is possible to be free of judgment, she will not ask with the dynamism that moves mountains. (Ref: Mark 11:23)

How do we prepare ourselves for a sincere prayer? We simply are where we are on this journey now to the best of our ability and pay attention to everything. As we do that, we are naturally prepared for our next step. When we are ready for our next step, we will feel it, and we will ask for it sincerely.

My Thoughts

What am I asking for now? My current aspiration came to me this morning. As I was trying to meditate, thoughts kept catching my attention. This has happened now for three days. It was very frustrating, and when I asked Holy Spirit for help, He pointed to the thoughts. What I realized when I paid attention to them is that they were about the narrative of Myron’s life.

I was distracted by them because I am apparently still attached to that narrative. Yes, I am involved in this life, but I don’t have to be attached to it. As I saw this, I realized what I needed to ask, and so my spiritual aspiration was revealed to me. I want to detach from this story. I saw myself being with my family in joy, and I saw myself being by myself in joy, and I was shown that the joy didn’t change according to where I was or who I was with.

This felt like I was being shown that if I am attached to what the story of Myron brings in the next moment, I am going to be in a perpetual state of suffering to one degree or another. It is like waiting for the other shoe to drop. However, if I am fully accepting of anything that occurs in the story and see myself as the observer and the unaffected Self, I can just enjoy it.

No expectations mean no disappointments and no thinking about the future, so just being in the present moment, enjoying that moment. This is also being without judgment. The work now is to keep that aspiration clear in my mind and to train the mind toward what I really want rather than what I used to value.

Past Entry

Judgment, whether it is projected outward onto someone else or inward onto myself, is that which keeps my mind imprisoned in ego thinking. It is as if I have placed the object of the judgment in a box and refuse to unlock it. In judgment, I have decided a thing and refuse to see it differently. It is the decision to allow the Holy Spirit to heal me through being willing to see differently that is my salvation. This change of mind is the miracle that brings me home. To refuse to see differently keeps the miracle away from me.

I am learning to be aware of how I am using judgment as a weapon against myself. Two things come to mind; one is certain special relationships, for instance, my relationships with my children, and the other is the special relationship I have with my body. Something that helped me to see what I have been doing is a message from the Holy Spirit shared by Regina Dawn Akers, in which He was helping her see that she used her body as a depository for her sense of unworthiness.

The way she explained it is that she used to look at her body and feel unworthy and think it is the body that makes her feel this way. The Holy Spirit helped her to see that it works the other way around. She feels unworthy, projects it onto the body, and then she can hope to improve the body and thereby become worthy. It was her plan for salvation until she understood what she was doing. Now she is free. But when I read this, it was like a bright light came on in a darkened room.

I saw that this is exactly what I have always done with my body.

But I had never been willing to look at it in that way. I kept telling myself that it was complicated. That I could not understand what goes on with my body issues and why I can’t ever come to a resolution. Of course, this is nonsense. I knew exactly what I was doing. Now I understand why I kept myself in the dark. I wanted to keep my plan for salvation in place, and I knew there was a part of my mind that would not go for this absurd plan if I were to really look at it.

So, I also applied this same idea to my special relationship with my children. I am afraid of damaging those relationships because I think I need them to be proof of my self-worth. Then I sabotage the relationships because I don’t think I deserve to feel self-worth. I try to repair the relationship because I think it is my salvation. In my plan of salvation, all I have to do is make it right, make it perfect, and get them to think of me as if I am special and worthy of their respect and love. Then, I will have proof that I am worthy. The ego loves this plan because it is one I can work on lifetime after lifetime since it is never going to work. I decided to see how it might feel to not judge myself.

What if I simply accepted everything I do and how I look as perfect?

The ego way of seeing this is that I am just copping out because I don’t want to face these challenges. It points out all the ways in which I am not perfect. The ego completely overlooks the fact that it bases this judgment on criteria it chooses and that criteria changes, so there is no way I can always meet it. As with all things “ego,” it comes with a built-in failure device. The ego’s plan for salvation will never work because its only consistent criterion is that I seek and do not find.

The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, reminds me that I am the Son of God. I was created perfect, and nothing I think or do can change that. He reminds me that each decision I make is a perfect reflection of who I am or that it is a perfect opportunity to choose differently. Either way, it is perfect. He reminds me that I am in total control of my life. I choose what I want in my life, and I choose what I would release. He reminds me that I cannot lose love because I am love. This plan for salvation is the only one that will work.

It is interesting to go back to this past entry.

I paid attention to my thoughts about my relationships. I almost never think of them in terms of a need to bolster my self-worth. On the few occasions it happens, I look at it with the Holy Spirit until it is healed. On the other hand, I allowed myself to completely forget about applying this to the body issues.

I am so glad to find this writing again. I am fully dedicated to releasing the idea of using the body to fulfill the ego’s plan of salvation. Instead, I will look at this with the Holy Spirit until God’s plan of Atonement has been fulfilled in this area. It is the only plan that will work.

Contemplation 2025

To enjoy the Pathways of Light Insights on ACIM Lesson 347 click here.

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