ACIM Daily Lesson 351 My sinless brother is my guide to peace. My sinful brother is my guide to pain. And which I choose to see I will behold.
My sinless brother is my guide to peace. My sinful brother is my guide to pain. And which I choose to see I will behold.
Photo by John Gardiner of Whangarei, New Zealand
Lesson 351
My sinless brother is my guide to peace. My sinful brother is my guide to pain. And which I choose to see I will behold.
1. Who is my brother but Your holy Son? ²And if I see him sinful I proclaim myself a sinner, not a Son of God; alone and friendless in a fearful world. ³Yet this perception is a choice I make, and can relinquish. ⁴I can also see my brother sinless, as Your holy Son. ⁵And with this choice I see my sinlessness, my everlasting Comforter and Friend beside me, and my way secure and clear. ⁶Choose, then, for me, my Father, through Your Voice. ⁷For He alone gives judgment in Your Name.
The title of this lesson says it all. If I see my brother as sinless, I will be at peace. When I see him as sinful, I will see myself the same. Which I choose is up to me. It is easy to see innocence rather than sin. I just ask the Holy Spirit to judge for me, and He sees that we are all as God created us. We can be nothing else. So, if I see someone as sinful, it is because I want to see them in that way. I can also change my mind, and when I do, the Holy Spirit will correct my thinking.
It is never, ever about the other person.
No matter what direction the story takes, no matter how obvious it seems the other person is guilty and the cause of my suffering, it is always about me. My purpose is to awaken from this dream of separation, and I cannot do this if I single out my brother and decide he is guilty. There simply is not a single case that this is true. In his ego story, he may be playing the part of the victimizer, but he is not his story, and he is innocent.
I can perceive him as if he is to blame, and if I do, I will suffer. Or I can accept responsibility for my life events and allow my mind to be healed of the beliefs that make up the images I call my life. Then my suffering ends. It is up to me. But I know for certain that no one makes me suffer. I choose love, or I choose to suffer, and the story does not determine that choice.
I have two favorite ways of getting to the cause of my suffering.
In one, I ask myself why this situation upsets me, and I continue to ask that of each answer until I get to the root cause. Then, I ask for healing of that belief. The other process is to realize that the only problem is that I asked the ego what the situation means. I change my mind and ask the Holy Spirit what it means and choose to allow Him to show me a different way to see things. In both processes, I am being directed away from the story and into my own confused mind so that the problem can be solved at the level it is occurring. Both processes lead me to forgiveness and to peace.
I went to my meeting last night for the first time in a few weeks. As I was looking around the circle at familiar and new faces, I realized how much I love everyone there. I feel so much appreciation for them for showing up and continuing to try hard every day to learn a new way of being. The world is hard, and I am so grateful to everyone who chooses to come here anyway.
I didn’t always feel this way. I used to have my favorites, and there were some who I judged. Because I was seeing them through the ego mind, I robbed myself of a chance to love them and to enjoy them. I am very grateful to know that I always see what I choose to see. Now, seeing love is something I do because that is my choice, not something that happens because of someone else.
Regina’s Tips
I found this in Regina’s tips to be particularly helpful.
So, although there is no way to measure your progress in knowing your Self directly, you can measure it indirectly by noticing the effects. An increase in inexplicable love, a reduction in psychological fear and self-preservation, and an increase in causeless joy are the signs of coming to know the Self.
Past Entry
This entry is from about this time years ago. I was having serious problems with getting my house finished after Hurricane Rita, and the plumber was my archenemy because he was holding me up. I started to update this posting to something more current, but as I thought about it, I realized that this symbol of inner conflict works as well as another.
Now, I am firmly established in the belief that I am 100% responsible for my life, but the ego doesn’t give up, and I still occasionally try to get out of it by blaming others. But I also notice that I cannot hold that position long. I just don’t believe it. This particular situation was the classroom in which I learned that essential lesson.
2005
The only thing that seems to stand in my way of seeing my brother sinless is my need to be right. The plumber keeps failing to show up. The ego says that he is wrong for that. I don’t want to see him as sinful because we are one, and if he is sinful, so am I, and if we are sinful, we are not in God. There is no getting around that. Yet, the ego insists that it is obvious that he is guilty. Every time he does not show up, it seems proof that he is sinful.
This is how the ego wants me to think of it: I am left with no recourse but to see myself a victim to his sin. I seem to be trapped on every level. On the level of form, I cannot move forward on my house because his refusal to live up to his obligations is keeping me in limbo. No more work can be done until he completes his work. I am his victim, or so it seems.
Even on the level of thoughts, it seems he is holding me hostage. I try to think lovingly of him, and I try not to see him as responsible for my frustration, but then I run up against a wall. This wall says, “But he did it.” How do I get around that? So now he is responsible for my house not being finished, for my hateful thoughts about him, and for my self-condemnation since, obviously, his behavior has made it impossible for me to forgive and so to see myself as blameless. It is all his fault, and I hate him! At this point, imagine a mental foot stamping. Maybe holding my breath until I turn blue.
At one time in my life, this is where I would have stayed.
Then the only recourse would have been to try to gain control of the situation through retribution or some other equally destructive means. But now, the ego comes up against a wall. This wall says that anger, blame, and refusal to admit responsibility for my own creations are unacceptable. Seeing myself as a victim is unacceptable.
So, for a while, it is a stalemate. Sometimes I notice that I am trying the ego thought system out again, but then I run into that Holy Spirit wall. I remember that he is innocent, as am I, and there is no compromise in this. Then back again to the ego that says, “But it is happening, and it is he who is doing it.” And then I swing back to the Holy Spirit and.
Oh, how the ego hates it when I turn from its arguments! It gets louder and more persuasive. It calls me a fool to trust and a fool to love when obviously, I am being taken advantage of. The other part of my mind simply asks, “How might I be helpful in this situation? What would be the most loving and helpful response?” I refuse to see this plumber as guilty. He is completely innocent. He is the Son of God.
The part he plays for me is victimizer to my victim.
For that, I owe him a debt of gratitude. Never before have I been given such a clear opportunity to see how determined I am to be a victim to the world and to find someone to blame for my choice. How can I feel anything but love for the one who helped me see what needs to be healed? This is where I used to get really stuck. What do I do about my plumbing needs? How do I love him and still insist that he meet his obligations?
This is confusion experienced when the ego tries to fix things. The ego has no understanding of how to love. I do not know what needs to be done, but to the degree that I am willing to set aside my desired outcome, I will be perfectly guided. I know that I will never be guided to see my brother as sinful. It is possible to approach my problem from the desire to see love made manifest rather than from a place of fear, which is where I have been.
I have been suffering because I have been afraid. I believed that getting my house finished was my goal, and I believed that being right was necessary. To make this happen, I believed the plumber had to be guilty. This is why I was suffering, not because of the plumber’s behavior but because of how I felt about the plumber. Love is the solution and the way out of fear and suffering. I know that when I set aside judgment, my mind will clear, suffering will end, and I will know what needs to be done.
Looking back on this, I am able to see my error clearly.
I was still pretty new at handling conflict effectively. I was able to see the problem and recognize it as being in my own mind. And I could see the solution was to forgive the situation and the beliefs that contributed to it. But that was where I got into trouble. I was trying to do it with my ego mind. I knew what I was supposed to believe, but I had not yet learned to look at my thoughts with the Holy Spirit and let Him undo them. Instead, I was trying to undo my thoughts alone.
Another problem was that I had the goal of returning to peace, but it was not my only goal. I also had the goal of changing the situation, of getting my way, of being fairly treated. Eventually, I let go of all goals except the peace of God. The house got finished, and it cost me a lot of money. But I learned a lesson that I came here to learn, and so I counted it as a roaring success.
The next time it seemed I was being victimized by a contractor, there was no conflict in my mind. When my ego insisted it wasn’t fair, and someone was guilty, I had no desire to go down that rocky road. I was at peace, and while the situation cost me a great deal of money, I wasn’t upset. And in a lovely act of generosity, the money was replaced. I have since had a number of lesser experiences where I could see myself as a victim, and each time, I have looked at them with the Holy Spirit and found my way to peace without all this suffering.
Contemplation 2025
To enjoy the Pathways of Light Insights on ACIM Lesson 351 click here.
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