ACIM Chapter 10. V. The Denial of God, P 8-10

ACIM Chapter 10. V. The Denial of God, P 8-10

V. The Denial of God, P 8

8 Do not look to the god of sickness for healing but only to the God of love, for healing is the acknowledgement of Him. When you acknowledge Him you will know that He has never ceased to acknowledge you, and that in His acknowledgement of you lies your being. You are not sick and you cannot die. But you can confuse yourself with things that do. Remember, though, that to do this is blasphemy, for it means that you are looking without love on God and His creation, from which He cannot be separated.

This paragraph has a passage that I keep on my remember board and that I use often.

“You are not sick and you cannot die. But you can confuse yourself with things that do.”

When I feel sick, I remind myself that Jesus says I am not sick.

I am just confused about what I am. When I forget my true nature and think I am sick, lonely, afraid, or guilty, I am turning my back on God. When I think that my brother is guilty, I am turning my back on God. And when I turn from the reality of creation, I am turning from God. I am also turning from my Self. And now I am confused about my identity. Only a body could be sick. I am not a body.

Jesus has told us that sickness is a defense against God. When I am sick in my body, in relationships, in finances, in emotions, or any area of my life, I have made a deliberate choice to defend against God. I am using sickness to keep out of my awareness God’s love for me and my love for Him. Through A Course in Miracles, I remember that I chose this, and now I realize that I don’t want it anymore. I am learning how to ask for and accept healing.

V. The Denial of God, P 9

9 Only the eternal can be loved, for love does not die. What is of God is His forever, and you are of God. Would He allow Himself to suffer? And would He offer His Son anything that is not acceptable to Him? If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of suffering. Yet to do this you must acknowledge Him as your Creator. This is not because you will be punished otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgement of your Father is the acknowledgement of yourself as you are. Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him you bring sin, pain and suffering into your own mind because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also deny what it creates because it is free.

When I read the sentence that says what is of God is His forever, and you are of God, I just cried. I cried from relief and from joy. I am His forever. Nor can I suffer or be in pain. And I cannot die. I cannot be or do or feel what is foreign to God. It’s kind of funny to think this is possible. I think of my child being born as a horse or an orange tree. Not possible, right? I cannot be anything unlike God because I am of Him.

So, where did this story of Myron come from?

Here I am in a body, feeling body things, experiencing separation. None of these things are what I must be and what I am. One thing that I am is powerful because my Father is powerful. So, with this power, I dream of things that cannot be, and I imagine I am in this dream. But the same power that made this possible also makes it possible for me to wake up from the dream.

How do I stay in the dream? I continue to use my power to make stories that are different than God. I pretend they are real, and so I become my own creator. At least in my mind, I am my own creator, and I am in charge of what I see and what I experience. I even give myself un-super powers and become small and weak, fragile and destined to death—pretty interesting choices for an all-powerful, eternal being.

How do I wake up from the dream? I lose interest in it. I stop playing around with un-creation and acknowledge my Father as my Creator. When I feel small and weak, I remember God does not create small and weak. I must be dreaming. When I feel sick, I remember that God does not create sickness. When I think of death, I remember God creates only the eternal. This is how I wake up. This is how I return to using my power for true creation.

V. The Denial of God, P 10

10 You do not realize how much you have denied yourself, and how much God, in His Love, would not have it so. Yet He would not interfere with you, because He would not know His Son if he were not free. To interfere with you would be to attack Himself, and God is not insane. When you deny Him you are insane. Would you have Him share your insanity? God will never cease to love His Son, and His Son will never cease to love Him. That was the condition of His Son’s creation, fixed forever in the Mind of God. To know that is sanity. To deny it is insanity. God gave Himself to you in your creation, and His gifts are eternal. Would you deny yourself to Him?

I used to think that if God really loved me, He would just wake me up, pull me from this dream, and take me home. This thought was a fear thought, fear that I was trapped here and couldn’t get out on my own. I was frustrated and felt like a victim of the world I had made and even a victim of my own stubborn denial. It seemed cruel that He would leave me stuck here when it would be so easy for Him to save me.

I can see how I used to mirror that thought in my behavior with others.

I would see them acting in a self-destructive way, and I would try to save them from themselves. This was based on my belief that A Course in Miracles was for everyone and for them right now, and I would try to make them see this was true… for their own good. ~smile~ My behavior was just a reflection of my fear that I couldn’t wake up on my own, and I needed someone (God) to do it for me. Maybe I was showing God how He should be waking me up.

When I tried to fix others, I was saying that I didn’t trust or believe in them and that they were not free. And this was a reflection of how I felt about myself. God does not interfere with us because we are free. He does believe in us, and He does trust us. He knows we are trustworthy and free because He created us like Himself. To think we are less than free, less than perfect, would be to think He is less than free and perfect, and that would mean God is insane. He is not.

We, however, are.

It is insane for a Divine being, such as we are, to think we are helplessly trapped in an illusion of our own making. The mind that made this elaborate illusion is capable of using that same power to disentangle from it. God is not afraid for us, and so we should not be afraid either. God does want us to remain as He created us and so we will, and that means we are perfectly safe.

We are, however, suffering from the belief that we are not safe, that we are not wholly perfect and perfectly free. As Jesus has pointed out, what we believe is true for us. It is not true in reality, but true in our mind, so in our mind, we suffer. God would not have us suffer, so He calls us to Him. He calls us out of our insanity. We are reminded that “God will never cease to love His Son, and His Son will never cease to love Him. That was the condition of His Son’s creation, fixed forever in the Mind of God.” I will remember this today, and I will return to sanity.