ACIM Chapter 11. I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 6, 7

ACIM Chapter 11. I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 6, 7

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 6

6 God has given you a place in His Mind that is yours forever. Yet you can keep it only by giving it, as it was given you. Could you be alone there, when it was given you because God did not will to be alone? God’s Mind cannot be lessened. It can only be increased, for everything He creates has the function of creating. Love does not limit, and what it creates is not limited. To give without limit is God’s Will for you, because only this can bring you the joy that is His and that He wills to share with you. Your love is as boundless as His because it is His.

Jesus tells us that we have a place in the Mind of God that is ours forever, but a condition of keeping that place is to give it as it was given to us. We are creators, and we are meant to increase the Mind of God through creation. We are without limits because Love is without limits, and thus, we are to share in this way to know the joy of our boundless love.

What a picture this is! I am in God forever, creating forever, loving, and joyful forever! There are no limits on Self and no limits on love. With no body made to limit and separate, there is nothing to fear, no sickness, suffering, or death. Without an “other,” there is no one to push away and no reason to and no place to push him. In God, all have all, so there is nothing to be jealous of, no reason for resentment, no feelings of rejection, abandonment, loss or lack.

Of course, I examine my life, and I see that this is not happening.

In making this world of illusion, I have not created; that is, I have not increased the Mind of God. This is not a world of limitless sharing and limitless love. In my desire to experience something else, I have tried to freeze love into forms I call bodies and other objects separate from each other, thus arresting creation at these artificial boundaries.

I have tried to limit the limitless. My goodness, I have been attempting to lessen God. I do this again and again all day long. For instance, I see a homeless person, and instead of recognizing God in this one, I see him as less than in so many ways and different than me; please God, different than me. I see a beautiful and wealthy person, and I fail to see God, and I fail to recognize this one is me, playing the beautiful and rich woman. Instead, I see only differences and feel only less than.

Where is the wholeness, the boundless love?

Where is the joy of creation in this thing I have made, and that I renew every day, every minute of the day? And God, where is God in this? Where is Love? Yet, even here in this dream of not-God, I can choose to perceive differently and thus bring our sleeping mind closer to Awakening, closer to God and my place in God.

As I do this, as I allow more and more healing, I begin to feel something that is not a dream, or at least is a dream of something not a dream. As I see this homeless man, my mind expands to include him, to know him as the light hidden within those rags, in that stench. I know that light because that light remains in my mind as well. As our lights merge, our minds are enlightened.

If you saw us on the street, you would never know that a miracle had occurred, but my heart feels it, and I never again feel quite the same degree of separation as I did before. There is a crack in the wall of isolation I have built between me and not-me that can never be sealed again. I find it easier and even joyful to continue this practice, to allow the light in my mind to see the light in minds all around me.

This is how I find my way back to God, to Love, to creation, to my eternal place in the Mind of God.

I notice someone near me, and I think to myself, “There I am.” I open my heart and mind to this one: no barriers, no defenses, just the joy of reunion. In the past, I prayed and prayed for union, for Christ’s Vision, for forgiveness. All along, I had nothing to do except open to Love and let it in. I only needed to stop defending separation and desire wholeness.

Holy Spirit, I love the thought of spending the day reuniting with my selves. As I study with fellow students, drive in heavy traffic, and face all the other forms of separation we have put into place, please help me remember my purpose. Help me to remember what you have shown me this morning. Please heal the mind that imagines separation. This is the experience I asked for, but now I long for love and union, and I long for God.

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 7

7 Could any part of God be without His Love, and could any part of His Love be contained? God is your heritage, because His one gift is Himself. How can you give except like Him if you would know His gift to you? Give, then, without limit and without end, to learn how much He has given you. Your ability to accept Him depends on your willingness to give as He gives. Your fatherhood and your Father are one. God wills to create, and your will is His. It follows, then, that you will to create, since your will follows from His. And being an extension of His Will, yours must be the same.

To know what God gives me, I must give as He gives, without limit and without end. What must I give? God is Love, and this is what He gives, so this is what I must give. In other places in the Course, Jesus tells us that sharing and communication are the closest we come to creation and to love in the world. How do I do this? How do I share and communicate endlessly and without limit?

The first thing that comes to mind is that I share and communicate only in union.

If I treat someone as if they are separate from me, with separate interests and separate goals, I will automatically compete with them. This is not sharing and not communication. This idea of competition seems inevitable here, but in my job as a salesperson, which is the epitome of a competitive environment, I learned differently.

Here is how that worked for me. I started off looking at customers as necessary to my survival. It seemed desperately vital that I not lose them to my competition. I needed them to stay with me to ensure my income. I tried to make this happen by being the one they called on when they were having problems or needed information they didn’t have. It masqueraded as caring and helpfulness. But it could be neither as, despite outward appearances, I was not sharing or communicating. I was using them to fulfill my needs.

I told myself that I would be the best vendor ever. He was lucky to have me working for his interests. But the truth was while we shared some goals, and that worked out for both of us, we were not in full communication. He wanted something from me, and I wanted something from him. That is not shared goals but competing goals.

I was not unlimited in my sharing.

I don’t think that I can actually share and communicate fully and completely without limits as long as I believe that there is this gap that exists between each of us. The fact that we use these bodies to promote that belief doesn’t help us remember our union. But neither does it make it impossible to remember we are one. I know this is true because, though I have not succeeded in knowing we are one all the time, I have done it sometimes. If I can know what we are sometimes , I can know it always.

So, I practice it. I ask the Holy Spirit to look with me at my relationships. These work relationships, as imperfect as they were, became the way I learned to see differently. I asked the Holy Spirit to look with me at the customer I was talking to and help me see him truly. It is what I would do in all relationships. I did this in my relationships with my children, my friends, and my coworkers. They are all the same relationship because we are all one Family of God, one mind.

As I have become more and more open to His answer, I notice that where I used to feel needful in a relationship, I began to feel loving. It took a while and was never perfect within the work environment, but there were remarkable changes. I did start to honestly care about the people I served and eventually lost my taste for competition as I discovered the joy of sharing.  

It makes me smile as I think how confused I used to be about all this.

I thought I was working as a salesperson to make a living, to establish myself in the hierarchy of salespeople, to impress my boss, and for many other ego reasons. But in retrospect, I see the real purpose. I was there to learn what it means to share and to communicate. Those lessons served me well and continue to do so in all my relationships.

I am so grateful now as I see how much happier and more peaceful, I am when I succeed in giving fully, needing nothing in return. Even though it is not yet perfect giving, it is such a sweet thing, this giving as my Father gives. It is a gift of fatherhood, and I claim it now. This is as my Father, in His unlimited love, would have me do. And when I have accepted it fully, I will be very close to creating as God creates.

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