ACIM Chapter 10. V. The Denial of God, P 13, 14

ACIM Chapter 10. V. The Denial of God, P 13, 14

V. The Denial of God, P 13

13 Do not perceive anything God did not create or you are denying Him. His is the only Fatherhood, and it is yours only because He has given it to you. Your gifts to yourself are meaningless, but your gifts to your creations are like His, because they are given in His Name. That is why your creations are as real as His. Yet the real Fatherhood must be acknowledged if the real Son is to be known. You believe that the sick things you have made are your real creations, because you believe that the sick images you perceive are the sons of God. Only if you accept the Fatherhood of `God will you have anything, because His Fatherhood gave you everything. That is why to deny Him is to deny yourself.

As I read this, I wondered how I could perceive nothing God did not create, and then I realized I was thinking of perceiving as “seeing.” I could not imagine how I could look around with my eyes and see only the real. Of course, that makes no sense because the eyes show me only the ephemeral, and what is real is eternal. The eyes show me only illusions.

Obviously, Jesus is telling me not to believe what I see, not to believe it is real and valuable, and something I would long for and give to myself. I will still need a house and a car and money, or at least something that passes for these things, depending on my circumstances. But they are not gifts to me. I used to long for a special car, a special house, a lot of money, and now I expect to receive all that I need. If I don’t have it, I must not need it.

Jesus says that I believe the sick things I have made are my creations.

While I believe this, I will not remember my real creations. As I read this passage, I thought about Lesson 325: “All things I think I see reflect ideas.” The world is filled with images of the ideas in my mind. When I think I want something, I make an image of it, project it outward, and value it. Thus, I can never be a victim of the world I see. I made it. Nor can I be unfairly treated. I decided on it.

This is where the idea of positive thinking and The Secret come from. We have made an image of a world and then we go another step and try to make an image from within that world. I think that as we recall some vague memory of how we made this world, we try to duplicate it, and we “discover” that what we want very much, we tend to get.

The problem with this idea is that we have many ideas in our minds. We have the idea of love, joy, and happiness, and we also have the idea of guilt, fear, suffering, and death. On both levels, as the maker of our experience and as the conscious manipulator of that experience, we make images from a grab bag of beliefs and thoughts. On yet another level, we decide what it all means depending on which mind we use, the split mind or the right mind.

We don’t understand anything, and we don’t know what anything is for.

How could we be surprised at the resultant mess? At this point, we pretend it all just showed up and we don’t know where it came from. We pretend that we are just victims of circumstance and of unkind and sometimes vicious people. In so doing, we give away our identity and, with it, our power. We hide out in the body, afraid to come out, afraid that the Creator of Reality is offended by our dream world.

We need not be afraid to acknowledge our Father. He is no more offended by our fanciful play than we are offended by our children as when in play, they pretend to be something they are not. We must acknowledge our Father if we are to remember who we are and if we are to reclaim the memory of our power and our place within Him.

V. The Denial of God, P 14

14 Arrogance is the denial of love, because love shares and arrogance withholds. As long as both appear to you to be desirable the concept of choice, which is not of God, will remain with you. While this is not true in eternity it is true in time, so that while time lasts in your mind there will be choices. Time itself is your choice. If you would remember eternity, you must look only on the eternal. If you allow yourself to become preoccupied with the temporal, you are living in time. As always, your choice is determined by what you value. Time and eternity cannot both be real, because they contradict each other. If you will accept only what is timeless as real, you will begin to understand eternity and make it yours.

This section tells us that only the truth is true, and our salvation rests on accepting this. This does not mean that we should never see illusions with our eyes; rather, we need to recognize them as illusions. We also need to recognize that illusions are a poor choice when we could have reality. This would seem self-evident, but we don’t remember reality and our guilt and fear keep us bound to the world when we could know ourselves in Heaven. Our brother, Jesus, has attained that state and is helping us to do so as well. I, for one, am eternally grateful for his loving help.

The following excerpt is from a past journal.

I share a story about making such a choice. It seems like the choice I make is not earth-shattering, but in a sense, that is exactly what it is. I used to value being right, being independent, and winning as worthy goals. That these goals cost me peace of mind and happiness seemed not to be part of the equation for me. Now, they are the goal, and this is an example of how it happened for me.

Yesterday went pretty well. We had our Monday meeting and I wondered if I had forgiven all the drama inherent in these meetings lately. I guess I have, at least to a great deal, as everything went pretty smoothly. As the day went on, I noticed friction between parties, but I just watched my mind and chose not to take part in it.

On my way home, I was listening to a book as I drove, and I kept getting distracted from what was being read by attack thoughts in my mind. It was kind of funny in a way. I had one attack thought after another directed at the people at work. It was like, suddenly, I let the dog off his leash and he was running wild.

For a few minutes, I was focused on hearing my story and kept coming back to it. Then I stopped myself, turned off the story, and looked at these thoughts. As I paid attention to my feelings, I realized the real problem. It was that I was dreading going to work this week in this extreme heat and that I was projecting my unhappiness with the situation onto my co-workers.

I knew immediately that I was not interested in this.

I released it all to the Holy Spirit. It all happened very quickly and I was back in peace, listening to my story. Forgiveness is easy when that is what you really want. I wanted peace more than I wanted to feel sorry for myself and more than I wanted to blame anyone, and so it was just done.

I reached a place where I wanted peace more than the ego drama of the day by making that choice over and over. While I still get entangled in a drama from time to time, I usually choose to focus on Reality rather than on illusion. I can believe only one or the other at any moment, so the more I believe the truth, the easier it is for me to make that choice.

Interested in how Regina Dawn Akers used The Secret Holy Spirit Style? CLICK HERE.