ACIM Chapter 11. I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 8, 9

ACIM Chapter 11. I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 8, 9

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 8

8 Yet what you will you do not know. This is not strange when you realize that to deny is to “not know.” God’s Will is that you are His Son. By denying this you deny your own will, and therefore do not know what it is. You must ask what God’s Will is in everything, because it is yours. You do not know what it is, but the Holy Spirit remembers it for you. Ask Him, therefore, what God’s Will is for you, and He will tell you yours. It cannot be too often repeated that you do not know it. Whenever what the Holy Spirit tells you appears to be coercive, it is only because you have not recognized your will.

This paragraph makes perfect sense to me. God created us by extending Himself so that we are exactly as God is. There is a passage in the Course that says God gave us all of Himself. This being true, we share His power, His creative ability, His Being, and His Will. God’s will is my will. I have become confused because I made a different will to have a different experience. But that is not my true will, only a device to allow an experience.

The Holy Spirit remembers my true will for me and holds it in my mind to access it when I am ready. Now that I am ready to awaken from this dream of separation and return to Reality, I ask the Holy Spirit what God’s Will is for me. When I first started doing this, I was conflicted. The ego mind, which I was still very identified with, felt this request was coercive, and it balked at the idea of giving up its own will in favor of another will.

Now I understand I am not the ego.

I identify more with my spirit than this foreign thought system, so I don’t resist as hard or as often as I used to. Often, I accept God’s Will completely and joyfully, and I have never once regretted that decision. On the other hand, the ego will has brought me pain and suffering nearly every time. I’m a slow learner, but I do learn. I want God’s Will, and I want to recognize it as my own. This is the all-important step I must take. Now, I am mastering that choice each time I am reluctant to give up a false belief. It is work, but it is good work.

Here is what I was thinking about this morning. I was trying to decide if I wanted to continue taking a certain medicine. I had thoughts of the pros and cons based on what I wanted to happen as opposed to what might happen. This is pretty useless contemplation since in our reduced capacity to actually think, while in the illusion, we depend on incomplete information. In other words, our ego doesn’t actually know anything. Why do we keep asking it for help?

Finally, I noticed what I was doing and stopped. I am not my ego, and I have access to a better advisor. The most basic information, ‘What is it for?’ is not something I know from the perspective of the ego mind. So, in a moment of clarity, I asked the Holy Spirit what is my will. And this is why I happily surrender my life and will to the Holy Spirit. I don’t remember my will, the will I share with God, and I have lost interest in fumbling my way through life trying to follow the insane ego will.

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 9

9 The projection of the ego makes it appear as if God’s Will is outside yourself, and therefore not yours. In this interpretation it seems possible for God’s Will and yours to conflict. God, then, may seem to demand of you what you do not want to give, and thus deprive you of what you want. Would God, Who wants only your will, be capable of this? Your will is His life, which He has given to you. Even in time you cannot live apart from Him. Sleep is not death. What He created can sleep, but cannot die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son’s will for himself. God’s Son cannot will death for himself because His Father is Life, and His Son is like Him. Creation is your will because it is His.

I was thinking just this weekend of how I used to be afraid to turn over to God certain areas of my life. Here is an example. I would worry and fret over my youngest son because he was very sick for a while and still has a lot of pain from a back injury. When I think that I need my son to be well, I am no longer at peace.

I have chosen the peace of God and have said that the peace of God is everything I want. When I became anxious for my son, I changed my mind and said that the peace of God is not everything I want. I also want my son to be well. I have discovered that wanting anything in the world catapults me out of peace. Either the peace of God is everything I want, or it is not. Need and peace are opposites, and I cannot have them both simultaneously.

I thought about this, and I realized that I felt a need to worry about my son.

Was I afraid to turn him over to the care of God? If so, then I must think that God and I have different wills and that God’s Will for my son is contrary to my will for him. This clearly cannot be right. God wills only love and happiness for us all. God is Love; could Love ever will for suffering?

The very idea of not worrying about my son seemed so strange to me. It was like my constant worry was all that stood between him and suffering. And yet, my worry brought no protection to my son and no healing. As I began to let go of the idea that I needed anything from my son in order to be at peace, I returned to my dedicated purpose of choosing peace. I returned to trust.

As my mind cleared, I realized that worry is like a negative prayer. It was like praying that my son would fulfill my expectations of pain and suffering. I began true prayer in which I remembered the truth instead. I remembered that he is God’s Son, and he has the Holy Spirit in his mind just as I do. He will be led to the truth just as I am being led to the truth. I began to trust him, and I began to realize I didn’t need him to be anything for me. His existence is gift enough.

I use this example because it was the hardest thing I have ever done.

Seeing it from this side, it is obvious that my neediness only got in the way of my relationship with my son. My worry only robbed me of peace. It was an expression of my belief that I have a will different than the Will of God.

I don’t know where my son’s story will take him, but I am certain that it will provide him with the opportunity to awaken. I am certain that he shares the Will of God, and his story will help him discover this. And I will help him as I continue to know that this is true while he is still confused about it. There is unshakable peace in the recognition that God is not my enemy and that we share the same will.

Here is an excerpt from my contemplation of Lesson 162 that fits perfectly with this paragraph. Sleep is not death. What He created can sleep, but cannot die.

When I first began the study of the Course, I thought that I was both a human being and a child of God, a body and a spirit. Now, I know this is not true. I am only as God created me, a Thought in His Mind. It is true that I can dream of being human. I can even dream of dying, but I cannot be what I was not created, so I cannot die. Our imagination is vivid and realistic, but it is still imagination. We can pretend to be fallible and even sinful, but it changes nothing. We remain as we were created, an extension of God.