ACIM Chapter 10. V. The Denial of God, P 5-7

ACIM Chapter 10. V. The Denial of God, P 5-7

V. The Denial of God, P 5

5 I said before that of yourself you can do nothing, but you are not of yourself. If you were, what you have made would be true, and you could never escape. It is because you did not make yourself that you need be troubled over nothing. Your gods are nothing, because your Father did not create them. You cannot make creators who are unlike your Creator, any more than He could have created a Son who was unlike Him. If creation is sharing, it cannot create what is unlike itself. It can share only what it is. Depression is isolation, and so it could not have been created.

Oh my! What a relief it is to know that none of this is real. I believe something that isn’t true, and from that belief, I project a representative image of that untrue belief, and that is all that has happened. It is not real because I cannot create something that is unlike Creation. Creation is sharing and God created me through sharing Himself, so I am like God. I can only create through sharing myself, and so my creations must be like God.

Anything else is just an illusion, a dream of something different.

In my desire to experience myself as something different than I am, I made up the idea of different gods so that I could mimic creation. The god of depression is one of them, and now I can pretend to be created in the image of the god of depression. If I think about something sad or difficult or fearful, I would feel depressed. But it is a false feeling because it was sourced by a false god. This is nothing for me to be concerned about because nothing actually happened. I only need to give the belief in depression and separation to the Holy Spirit to be corrected.

God is not alone, and it is His nature to create through sharing. Depression is isolation, and so it could not have been created. In truth, I can only feel joy and peace and love because that is what I am. And thank God, I cannot be anything else. When If I were to feel depressed, I would only be confused. Alone, I cannot do anything about the confusion, but I am not alone. The Holy Spirit will correct my mistakes, as I am willing to relinquish them to Him.

Here is something that used to happen when I was still working.

Every year, we had a big conference. That whole week was very hectic with long hours. I would think of all that I had to do, the long hours standing on concrete floors, the stress of it all, and I would feel depressed. But I was learning from the Course, and I had been practicing forgiveness. So, I was only temporarily discouraged because I discovered that I was not bound by the laws of my false god.

I discovered that I could experience these things without feeling discouraged and depressed. Bowing down to this false god is simply a choice I made, and I could make a different choice. With the Holy Spirit’s help, I could relinquish the belief that depression is real. It helped to remember that I could place the future in the Hands of God. This is a statement that leads out of confusion and into Reality. It was through opportunities like this that I became adept at turning from the false gods I made to the God of Creation. I learned to put everything in His Hands.

V. The Denial of God, P 6

6 Son of God, you have not sinned, but you have been much mistaken. Yet this can be corrected and God will help you, knowing that you could not sin against Him. You denied Him because you loved Him, knowing that if you recognized your love for Him, you could not deny Him. Your denial of Him therefore means that you love Him, and that you know He loves you. Remember that what you deny you must have once known. And if you accept denial, you can accept its undoing.

This is a short paragraph, but very helpful. I have not sinned but have only been mistaken. Every sinful thing I have ever done is just a symbol, a reflection, of the one sin that I believe in. I believe that I denied God, turned my back on Him, and so changed both myself and Him. That is the sin that keeps me in the illusion, afraid to leave it no matter how painful it becomes. Jesus is telling us that we don’t have to be afraid of this imagined sin. He says that we could not have sinned against God.

This sentence intrigued me:

“You denied Him because you loved Him, knowing that if you recognized your love for Him, you could not deny Him.” Here is the thought that came to me as I read this. In order to have the experience of not-God, or separation, we had to deny God. If we did not, our love for God would have made pretending to be separate from Him impossible.

In the eons of time since this tiny mad idea took form and we took a detour into fear and guilt, we have forgotten the original intention. Now, we are afraid of our denial, thinking we accomplished the impossible and truly affected God. This is the mistaken idea that we are holding onto, and it is the belief that keeps us in the dream, afraid to wake up.

But the truth is in our minds, and God calls us to awaken. We can hear that call, and in fact, we have heard it. That is why we were led to this Course and keep at it even when it seems hard. We have heard the call, and it has awakened an ancient memory that remains in our minds. We are remembering that we love God and that He loves us.

V. The Denial of God, P 7

7 Your Father has not denied you. He does not retaliate, but He does call to you to return. When you think He has not answered your call, you have not answered His. He calls to you from every part of the Sonship, because of His Love for His Son. If you hear His message He has answered you, and you will learn of Him if you hear aright. The Love of God is in everything He created, for His Son is everywhere. Look with peace upon your brothers, and God will come rushing into your heart in gratitude for your gift to Him.

God has not denied me, and He isn’t upset that I used denial of Him in my game of separation. He just wants me to come home now, and I am learning that this is what I want, too. His Voice speaks to me all through the day, and I listen..  and sometimes I don’t. That I am not listening does not mean He has failed to answer. His answer will always be some form of love that I can understand. Over time, I have learned that this does not have to be in some concrete experience, though often it is. I am learning to recognize and accept love that is not attached to anything.

God wants me to recognize His Love.

So, while I still need form in order to understand His Answer, it is given to me in this way. Jesus tells us that God’s love is in everything He created, for His Son is everywhere. All I need to do to receive this love is look with peace upon my brothers. I have an unlimited number of opportunities to do this, from smiling at a stranger to pausing in traffic to let someone merge in front of me to overlooking an attack and recognizing it as a call for love.

When I am at peace with my brothers, I experience the love of God to the degree I am able to accept it. Guilt is a wall that I have erected between myself and love, but in being at peace with my brothers, I am relinquishing the belief in guilt and so relinquishing the need for that wall. As it comes down, I am bathed in the love of God. It puts a whole other perspective on the desire to judge my brothers.  The high cost of judgment is seen when I realize what I give up when I do this.