ACIM Chapter 11. VIII. The Problem and the Answer, P 6-8

ACIM Chapter 11. VIII. The Problem and the Answer, P 6-8

VIII. The Problem and the Answer, P 6

⁶ The Holy Spirit will give you only what is yours, and will take nothing in return. For what is yours is everything, and you share it with God. That is its reality. Would the Holy Spirit, Who wills only to restore, be capable of misinterpreting the question you must ask to learn His answer? You have heard the answer, but you have misunderstood the question. You believe that to ask for guidance of the Holy Spirit is to ask for deprivation.

I am drawn to that last sentence. I believe that asking the Holy Spirit for guidance is to ask for deprivation. Could that be true? I remember when I first started working on special relationships, especially those with my children. It took a long time for me to accept that the Holy Spirit wasn’t asking me to give up love when He asked me for those relationships.

 I felt like Abraham offering the sacrifice of his son on the altar. When I told Him about my fear, He told me that He just wanted to take the elements that were not love, such as neediness, and that He would give the relationship back to me purified. At first, it was hard to accept because I didn’t know how to truly love, so I was afraid of what it would mean for the relationship to change.

I have asked for help with body issues and noticed thoughts that indicate I believed that He wanted me to sacrifice. Maybe this pain or this sickness is to help me in some way. Maybe I am to remain sick for some good I don’t understand, as if God would teach through pain. So, I would look in the world for an answer, the right doctor or the right medicine.

Then there are the more subtle fears.

If I ask the Holy Spirit for everything, where does that leave the self? What would the self that I have thought of as ‘me’ do if it did not make decisions? Do I want to abandon this little self I made? Would that be the ultimate sacrifice? I am learning to let that idea go.

First, I am learning that I don’t want to make plans or decisions on my own. I am learning to ask for guidance in all things and to wait for that guidance. I practice this as often as I can, and in so doing, I am learning that doing all things with God is not a sacrifice. In fact, I am learning that I don’t even know what would make me happy, much less how to achieve it, so I need help.

Ultimately, I am learning that there is no “by myself.” How could I do anything by myself if I live in God, and if I am one with God? How could I make decisions on my own when there is nothing but God? So, what is happening when I think I am deciding on my own? I am dreaming. That’s all, just dreaming. I am dreaming that I have a mind separate from the Mind of God, and I can use that mind to establish myself outside God. It is absurd to believe this could be reality.

Giving up this dream is no sacrifice.

I am giving up an illusion of separateness in favor of my divinity. I am giving up nothing so that I can remember that I have everything. All these little forms of surrender are important only in that they remind me that I can trust God and they remind me of my reality. As I surrender the little self, the Holy Spirit gives me everything in its place, but I won’t recognize it as everything if I cling to the notion that the ego is valuable to me. I’m letting that go.

VIII. The Problem and the Answer, P 7

⁷ Little child of God, you do not understand your Father. You believe in a world that takes, because you believe that you can get by taking. And by that perception you have lost sight of the real world. You are afraid of the world as you see it, but the real world is still yours for the asking. Do not deny it to yourself, for it can only free you. Nothing of God will enslave His Son whom He created free and whose freedom is protected by His Being. Blessed are you who are willing to ask the truth of God without fear, for only thus can you learn that His answer is the release from fear.

I am teaching myself to ask for the truth without fear. I watch my mind as I ask for healing and I notice if the asking is coming from fear or from love. If I see that I am asking with fear, I stop and think about being that little child approaching her Father with absolute trust, knowing He loves her and wants only her good. I pause long enough to get that feeling, the openness and acceptance, the trust and love both given and received, just in the way it was when I was very young.

When I was a little child, I asked my parents for what I wanted, never considering that maybe this was not an appropriate thing to ask for or that they would not want to give it to me. I never asked myself if I deserved to receive it. It never occurred to me that I would have to “pay” in some way to receive what I asked for.

I didn’t wonder how they could give me what I wanted, how it would come to me.

I just asked and trusted. There was no fear in my asking. This is the attitude and the feeling that I am recovering. I am learning how to become as a little child again and approach my Father with child-like innocent expectations. In doing this, fear of God is falling away, and joy is taking its place.

The ego mind is very distrustful of this openness and wants to close off again in the old defensive posture. It remembers how the world taught it to be suspicious and wary of other’s motivations and wants to protect against this. But I know that the ego defends against the ego and that while the ego mind thinks of itself as a savior, it is actually the cause of what it would save me from. I am willing to know that I need no defense against God and so I continue my practice and allow my mind to be healed as I do so.

Holy Spirit, please help me today to be like a little child: open, trusting, and joyful.

VIII. The Problem and the Answer, P 8

⁸ Beautiful child of God, you are asking only for what I promised you. Do you believe I would deceive you? The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. Believe that the truth is in me, for I know that it is in you. God’s Sons have nothing they do not share. Ask for truth of any Son of God, and you have asked it of me. Not one of us but has the answer in him, to give to anyone who asks it of him.

Sometimes, I wonder how I can ask for an answer to a problem and seem not to receive one. Jesus says that this cannot happen, so I think it is that I am asking the wrong question, that I don’t want the answer, or that I have decided how the answer must come and in what form.

When I was having so much trouble seeing my co-workers with Christ Vision, I kept asking for help. I said that I wanted my mind to be healed. I asked for my mind to be healed because I understood that the problem was in my mind, not in the workplace. But I still wanted them to be different. I wanted them to change to people I could like and enjoy working with.

So, you see, the hold-up in getting the answer was my confusion about what I wanted.

Eventually, I was able to let go of the confusion and simply desire a healed mind. Miraculously, I began to enjoy my co-workers. They were just the kind of people I like to work with. And, of course, they were. They, as I know them, are just an illusion, an illusion I called forward. When I released that illusion, I experienced those people in a new way.

Here is another example. I have a friend who drinks a lot. I think that she is on the edge, teetering between being a heavy drinker and being an alcoholic. It worries me, and it also makes me uncomfortable. Having lived with and around alcoholics, I know how destructive this behavior is. It also brings up unpleasant memories for me.

My prayer for this situation was that her mind be healed. Ha ha. But I really did believe that the problem was out there in her behavior. I am not ever totally insane anymore so I asked the Holy Spirit to clarify this for me. I saw that the problem I had was twofold. First, I didn’t want all that unhealed and unforgiven past coming up to haunt me again. It was not healed because I didn’t want to forgive it.

The second part is that I saw her as having a problem, as being unhealed.

This may be true in the story, but in my mind, there was no distinction. She was my friend, the alcoholic, or something near it. I saw her as damaged and possibly on her way to ruination. So, in essence, my prayer was something like this. “God, here is your alcoholic child. Heal her.” I wanted God to agree with my assessment of my friend and then do something about it.

I imagined God smiling gently and waiting for me to ask a reasonable question so He could answer it. Eventually, I did that. So, I asked that my mind be healed. I chose to accept the Atonement for myself, forgiving the past so that I could see the present more clearly. I asked for help to see my friend in all her beautiful glory instead of this dark image I had made. As for what I could do in the story, I asked to be given the direction and words that would be helpful should that moment ever occur.

God always answers. I must ask a clear, reasonable question, and I must be willing to hear the answer.