ACIM Chapter 11. VI. Waking to Redemption P 3, 4

ACIM Chapter 11. VI. Waking to Redemption P 3, 4

VI. Waking to Redemption P 3

³ This course is perfectly clear. If you do not see it clearly, it is because you are interpreting against it, and therefore do not believe it. And since belief determines perception, you do not perceive what it means and therefore do not accept it. Yet different experiences lead to different beliefs, and with them different perceptions. For perceptions are learned with beliefs, and experience does teach. I am leading you to a new kind of experience that you will become less and less willing to deny. Learning of Christ is easy, for to perceive with Him involves no strain at all. His perceptions are your natural awareness, and it is only the distortions you introduce that tire you. Let the Christ in you interpret for you, and do not try to limit what you see by narrow little beliefs that are unworthy of God’s Son. For until Christ comes into His Own, the Son of God will see himself as Fatherless.

Jesus says the Course is perfectly clear, and I agree with him.

There was a time when that sounded crazy to me. The Course was so hard for me to understand and harder still to accept. What I discovered over time is that everything that seemed complicated and hard became simple and easy as I was ready to allow that change. I was the one making it seem difficult. I was interpreting against it and so did not believe it.

It seemed to me that I believed it but just couldn’t do it. But I see now that I didn’t really believe it. I would read something like we were all one and try to believe it. I would try to see us as one but still hold onto the idea that we were different. Or I would see this one as better than another or worse. I would see some people victimizing me or others and believe in that instead of believing in oneness.

It was a process, and it took me time to walk through it. Each step I took brought me a new experience, and that experience changed the way I saw things. It was miraculous, really. I would struggle with letting a grievance go, and it would be so hard, sometimes taking weeks or months. I had a couple that took years.

But then one day I would finally reach my tipping point.

I would be so sick of feeling stressed by the situation that I would finally ask with all my heart to be relieved of this grievance. And that would be the moment that I wanted peace more than I wanted to be right, and it was just done. I was healed, and I was happy. The next one would be easier because I believed in the healing power of the Atonement more than I had before.

I have finally reached the point where my perceptions are true enough that I seldom hold onto wrong-minded thinking for very long. My experience of allowing those thoughts to be healed has led me to new beliefs and changed perceptions. More thoughts are coming up for healing, and I look at them with the Holy Spirit. I am willing to see Christ’s Vision in a way I didn’t even understand before. Occasionally, it still feels hard, but I am not fooled. I know it is not hard, just temporarily unwelcome.

VI. Waking to Redemption P 4

⁴ I am your resurrection and your life. You live in me because you live in God. And everyone lives in you, as you live in everyone. Can you, then, perceive unworthiness in a brother and not perceive it in yourself? And can you perceive it in yourself and not perceive it in God? Believe in the resurrection because it has been accomplished, and it has been accomplished in you. This is as true now as it will ever be, for the resurrection is the Will of God, which knows no time and no exceptions. But make no exceptions yourself, or you will not perceive what has been accomplished for you. For we ascend unto the Father together, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, for such is the nature of God’s Son as his Father created him.

To truly understand and accept my true nature, my complete safety, and the absolute certainty of my return to God, it is necessary to accept that there is only God. I could not be separate from God because there is no “separate from God.” I will “return” to God because I never left. There is no time and so there is not a “time” I am not in God and part of God. In each moment, each eternal now, I am in God.

There is no will that is not God’s Will.

Thus I am as He created me, and nothing else could be true. I cannot have a will separate from God because there is no such thing. How could I be different from God and be in God? Clearly, something else is going on here. If only God is possible, then I must be part of God and in God, and anything not in alignment with that truth must not be real. I must be dreaming, surely. What I imagine to be real can only be an illusion.

This is all so self-evident when I sit here with my sweet brother, Jesus, and let him enlighten me about it. So why is it I still fall into the story and think that something is happening and it’s real and it matters, and I must do something about it? And what do I do about it? I call my story of Myron my life, but the truth is, if there were any such thing as death, this would be it. I am ready to resurrect from this pretense of death.

It is helping me to understand that within the vastness that is God, is Jesus.

And within the vastness of Jesus is me. And within the vastness of me, is every other brother. Whatever I believe about my brother, I, therefore, must believe about myself. Whatever I believe about myself, I must believe about Jesus and about God.

I suppose that is why the thing most of us take from Jesus’ life is his pain and suffering in the crucifixion. We do that because we believe in pain, suffering, and punishment. It is why we believed for so long, that God would sacrifice His Son for our sins. We believe in sacrifice and sin and retribution, so we believed it of God. But we are learning differently.

To be helpful to me now, I must reduce these lofty ideas to the level at which I find myself. Each time I see a brother, here is what I know.

When I meet anyone remember it is a holy encounter.

As you see him, I will see myself.

As I treat him, I will treat myself.

And as I think of him, I will think of myself.

I never forget this, for in him I will find myself or lose myself.

(Paraphrased from T.8.II.4)

Each encounter with a brother has the potential to awaken me or deepen my sleep. How I use that encounter is up to me, but the sheer potential for good is staggering. Holy Spirit, help me remember this and let go of all the nonsense that blocks this potential.