ACIM Chapter 11. II. The Invitation to Healing, P 5-7

ACIM Chapter 11. II. The Invitation to Healing, P 5-7

II. The Invitation to Healing, P 5

5 The Holy Spirit cannot speak to an unwelcoming host, because He will not be heard. The Eternal Guest remains, but His Voice grows faint in alien company. He needs your protection, only because your care is a sign that you want Him. Think like Him ever so slightly, and the little spark becomes a blazing light that fills your mind so that He becomes your only Guest. Whenever you ask the ego to enter, you lessen His welcome. He will remain, but you have allied yourself against Him. Whatever journey you choose to take, He will go with you, waiting. You can safely trust His patience, for He cannot leave a part of God. Yet you need far more than patience.

The Holy Spirit is always with me and always will be because He cannot abandon a part of God. What He needs from me in order to help me is my welcome. I must want His help. Otherwise, all He can do is wait patiently for me to realize I do want that help. But as Jesus says, I need more than His patience. I need His active participation in my Awakening.

I do welcome the Holy Spirit, and I open my mind and heart to Him.

It is in asking for His help, His guidance, and His healing that I make Him welcome. But I must protect His place in my mind by continuing to desire His help. I can still turn to the ego for answers, so I must be vigilant in noticing whom I ask for help. When I look to the ego for guidance, I have lessened the Holy Spirit’s welcome, and so, while He remains with me, He cannot help me.

I want to Awaken and the Holy Spirit will help me to do this, and it will occur much more easily if I do not block His help. This is not hard; it just requires practice and dedication to my purpose. I am proficient at catching the mind’s tendency to return to judgment and to lose itself in illusions. I have become adept at changing my mind. Now I continue my practice until I have mastered this decision.

Just this morning, the Holy Spirit was pointing out that I still avoid being still and silent, that I try to fill even those moments when I could enjoy the silence but find something to fill it. He also showed me that this is a way that I keep the separate self in place, that is, the ego. It is like I am saying, “ Ego, you decide what I should do in this moment, and quick before I discover what is in the silence.” The Holy Spirit cannot drag me back into the silence so He waits patiently for me to notice my error and correct it.

II. The Invitation to Healing, P 6

6 You will never rest until you know your function and fulfil it, for only in this can your will and your Father’s be wholly joined. To have Him is to be like Him, and He has given Himself to you. You who have God must be as God, for His function became yours with His gift. Invite this knowledge back into your mind, and let nothing that obscures it enter. The Guest Whom God sent you will teach you how to do this, if you but recognize the little spark and are willing to let it grow. Your willingness need not be perfect, because His is. If you will merely offer Him a little place, He will lighten it so much that you will gladly let it be increased. And by this increase, you will begin to remember creation.

I am as God is, and this is my nature in truth, though not so much in the illusion. Here, I seem to be something else altogether, something weak and fragile, guilty and afraid. But as I give attention to that spark in my mind, the light grows and I see more clearly. My Guest knows what I am and how to awaken me to this glorious truth. All I have to do is invite His help and make Him welcome through my attention to Him.

Watching the ego mind try to get my attention in so many little ways is interesting.

It wants me to feed its appetites. This sudden feeling as if I really need something sweet to eat, or something salty and crunchy. I wonder if I have some chips in the pantry. Oh, yes! I do. How perfect. And just like that, I have given the ego my attention, and my body becomes my world. It’s insanity.

Thank you, God, that my willingness does not have to be perfect. His willingness is perfect, and it will increase mine. Here is the sentence that encourages me greatly this day.

Invite this knowledge back into your mind, and let nothing that obscures it enter.

I invite the knowledge of my function and who I am. I invite healing of all that is not God, and I invite the Holy Spirit to use this vessel for His work. And I make this invitation real and useful by letting nothing that obscures it enter my mind. I do this every day, all through the day, as I stay vigilant for obscuring thoughts and beliefs and readily give them to the Holy Spirit so that they be purified.

II. The Invitation to Healing, P 7

7 Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God? You will accept only whom you invite. You are free to determine who shall be your guest, and how long he shall remain with you. Yet this is not real freedom, for it still depends on how you see it. The Holy Spirit is there; although He cannot help you without your invitation. And the ego is nothing, whether you invite it in or not. Real freedom depends on welcoming reality, and of your guests only the Holy Spirit is real. Know, then, Who abides with you merely by recognizing what is there already, and do not be satisfied with imaginary comforters, for the Comforter of God is in you.

There is only one kind of healing, and that is the healing of the mind.

From a healed mind, a healed world is reflected. The only way to heal the mind is to invite the Holy Spirit to look with us at what is not healed and to undo what we see there. In joining with the Holy Spirit, we join with God, and we know our Oneness.

This is our function, our only function, and the only way we are going to Awaken and achieve peace. The Holy Spirit waits with us as we make this decision. As we call to Him, He steps forward and lights our way. When we look to the ego for comfort and guidance, the Holy Spirit steps back. He must do this because He cannot override our will.

What we discover is that the ego is not a comfort and guides us deeper into nowhere. Eventually, we must return to our true Guide because no one will choose darkness forever. The way this has unfolded in my life, and probably in most lives, is that I don’t make this choice only once but over and over. Each time I make the choice for God, the ego gets smaller and less substantial in my mind, and the choice for God is easier to make.

Let us not be satisfied with imaginary comforters, for the Comforter of God is in us.

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