ACIM Chapter 10. II. The Decision to Forget, P 1-3

ACIM Chapter 10. II. The Decision to Forget, P 1-3

II. The Decision to Forget, P 1

1 Unless you first know something you cannot dissociate it. Knowledge must precede dissociation, so that dissociation is nothing more than a decision to forget. What has been forgotten then appears to be fearful, but only because the dissociation is an attack on truth. You are fearful because you have forgotten. And you have replaced your knowledge by an awareness of dreams because you are afraid of your dissociation, not of what you have dissociated. When what you have dissociated is accepted, it ceases to be fearful.

I don’t think about it often, but occasionally, I have had the disturbing thought that maybe I chose to be something else because I didn’t like what I was. And I think, “Why would I have left Heaven if Heaven is wonderful?” Many students of the Course tell me they have this thought, too. I don’t let myself dwell on this too much because it feels a little scary to me. Now, it seems that Jesus is confronting this idea. He also explains why I have this mostly unacknowledged fear.

He is telling me that I am afraid.

It is not fear of what I have dissociated, but that I dissociated in the first place. I decided to forget what I am and where I am, and that decision scared me. It is frightening to me because it is an attack on the truth. This is a relief because it means I don’t have to be afraid of what I forgot. I am not really afraid of my true nature, and thankfully, I am not really afraid of God.

In my fear, I replaced the truth with illusions, and that is where I am now, dreaming of something to distract me from my unease. But I can stop any time I want to. I don’t have to keep up this distracting story because there is nothing to fear. This is why Jesus spends so much time in the Course, reassuring us that God loves us and that we love Him. I chose to forget, and now I must choose to remember. As Jesus talks to us about our true nature and the nature of God, I feel a memory beginning to make itself known to me.

II. The Decision to Forget, P 2

2 Yet to give up the dissociation of reality brings more than merely lack of fear. In this decision lie joy and peace and the glory of creation. Offer the Holy Spirit only your willingness to remember, for He retains the knowledge of God and of yourself for you, waiting for your acceptance. Give up gladly everything that would stand in the way of your remembering, for God is in your memory. His Voice will tell you that you are part of Him when you are willing to remember Him and know your own reality again. Let nothing in this world delay your remembering of Him, for in this remembering is the knowledge of yourself.

The memory of God is in my mind and waiting for me to accept it into my awareness. The only thing preventing that is that I want something else instead. We are so steeped in separation thinking that it is hard to understand wholeness. God is Whole and Complete. There is nothing in God except God. So, to know God, I must put aside the desire to know something that is not God.

Since there is nothing except God, I am actually putting away nothing.

But if I value it, I will not put it away. I have these special relationships that I think are valuable, but in God, nothing is special. Everything is equal in importance because everything is equal in reality. I am reading a book called “Lunch with Buddha.” In it, the teacher helps his student understand a different kind of love than he presently knows.

He tells him that there is a jewel within his precious daughter, which he can accept because he sees that jewel. He knows the reality of her perfection. And He points this out in each of his special relationships. Then, he explains that the same jewel is in each person and that he can learn to see it there so that his love for everyone is the same as his love for his children. (These are mostly my words, but that was the concept.)

This is what I want. I want to see each person with the same vision I see my children. No matter what they do or say, I know they are wonderful. I know they are perfect beneath their behavior. Their behavior is an illusion based on false beliefs and has nothing to do with who they are. It is insignificant next to their reality. If they behave badly, I disregard it and continue to see only the love that they are. Now that I have become very good at this, I am learning to see others in the same way. This is one way I remove the blocks that keep me from remembering God and my Self.

Interestingly enough, I was wondering what I needed to do to take that last step.

I couldn’t understand why I had not done so already. So, I asked Jesus what this reluctance was about. I remembered being told I enjoyed traveling, that is, I liked these stories of life and wanted to keep having them. But I was guided to a different idea, the idea that I was guilty for leaving God and that He just wanted to get His hands on me so he could finally punish me.

I guess this is the ego’s last and most extreme effort to keep us from remembering God’s love for us. I was shocked to discover this thought was still meaningful to me. And I knew it was because I felt fear when I confronted it. It was a good thing to see it because it is in looking at fear thoughts with the Holy Spirit that they are undone. And now here we are, reading about the decision to forget and the fear of having made that decision and how we are not really afraid of what we dissociated from, but of the dissociation itself. Perfect.

II. The Decision to Forget, P 3

3 To remember is merely to restore to your mind what is already there. You do not make what you remember; you merely accept again what is already there, but was rejected. The ability to accept truth in this world is the perceptual counterpart of creating in the Kingdom. God will do His part if you will do yours, and His return in exchange for yours is the exchange of knowledge for perception. Nothing is beyond His Will for you. But signify your will to remember Him, and behold! He will give you everything but for the asking.

It was especially helpful to read that to remember is to restore what is already there. The truth, my reality, is already in my mind. I have made myself unaware of it because I wanted a different experience. That’s okay. I’m not guilty for this and the memory can be retrieved. This is what I have spent much of my life doing. I am making a decision to remember what I chose to forget. We are going to read about this further as we go along, and here is one of my favorite passages.

²Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. ³In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. (ACIM, T-27.VIII.6:2-3)

Do you notice that it doesn’t say, we forgot to laugh, like it was an accident?

It says we remembered not to laugh at the absurd idea that we could be separate from God. We deliberately made the choice to believe we could. After all, if we kept remembering that our adventures were not real, it wouldn’t be the same. Well we can change our minds. We can decide to remember.

Evidently, just saying I am willing to remember is not the same as being willing to remember. If that were so, I would be sharing with you from an enlightened mind. As I watch my mind, I see what it is that I am choosing instead of God. This morning, I had thoughts about not having time to finish this writing. I spent many minutes rewriting history as I imagined a confrontation and this time I seemed to win. Then, I thought about something smart I did and congratulated myself for it. I imagined ways I could tell that story and, in each way, I just got smarter and smarter.

Just a lot of other nonsense as well.

When my mind got especially busy, I finally noticed and reminded myself that I was using the ego mind to think. I chose to use the God-Mind instead. The mind slowed and I felt peace take the place of the mindless chatter. I looked at the time and saw that I did have time to write this after all. I asked Spirit to guide me as I worked today, to help me be the love that I am. Thoughts of attack, grievances, fear, and guilt rose up to awareness so that they could be released.

I stepped away from the desire to make things happen, to choose what is important and what isn’t, to defend myself. I stepped into love, trust, and peace. It was simple and seamless. It is a perfect way to start the day because I have made a decision for God that will serve as a constant reminder of what I want and how to achieve it. I did my part. I chose God, and the Holy Spirit did His part and showed me what was there all along: peace, love, and happiness. It is mine for the asking. And so, the mind begins to remember. I will not stop until the memory of reality is fully restored.

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