ACIM Chapter 12. IV. Seeking and Finding, P 1, 2

ACIM Chapter 12. IV. Seeking and Finding, P 1, 2

IV. Seeking and Finding, P 1

1 The ego is certain that love is dangerous, and this is always its central teaching. It never puts it this way; on the contrary, everyone who believes that the ego is salvation seems to be intensely engaged in the search for love. Yet the ego, though encouraging the search for love very actively, makes one proviso; do not find it. Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as: “Seek and do not find.” This is the one promise the ego holds out to you, and the one promise it will keep. For the ego pursues its goal with fanatic insistence, and its judgment, though severely impaired, is completely consistent.

The ego mind believes in the search for love. It just doesn’t know what love is. As long as I use the ego mind to do my thinking, I do not know what love is. So, I search endlessly, and of course, since I don’t know love, I have no way of finding it. The ego goes on insisting that the search simply isn’t complete and I need to keep looking.

I’ve been married and divorced three times.

Each time I found a new “love,” I thought, “This is it! This is the one!” As if love could be contained only in a single person meant just for me. As if I could not have love unless I found this one special person. And even when I followed the ego’s dictates and found that love object, I was always disappointed because that one did not live up to the ego’s expectations.

As far as I can tell, the ego’s idea of love is a bargain made between two people in which there is an agreement to limit love. If God is love, then it is an agreement to limit God. Love then becomes an impossibility if not an outright attack. This doesn’t seem like love to me so much as it feels like guilt, and guilt feels like fear.

Some relationships seem to offer love more than others, but even in these there is a bargain struck. “You be the person I think I need you to be, and I will feel loved” is the basis of the contract. When that ceases to happen, the feeling of “love” turns into hate. Even if the bargain seems to be holding, there is an undercurrent of anxiety. What if there is betrayal? What if there is abandonment? Love that can be lost is a source of fear. Is love fear?

There is love that is real and perfect, with no fear or guilt attached to it.

This love has no object; it isn’t special to one or the other. This love is complete as it is and is not contained within one relationship and denied to another. It does not begin, nor does it end. It simply is, eternally. The ego can only read about this love. It cannot understand it. It certainly cannot offer it and so it keeps the mind busy looking for love that isn’t love.

I can imagine love that is not special to any one person. I can even imagine loving everyone equally. However, I haven’t done this consistently yet. But I have made inroads, and I have tasted this, so I can imagine what it must be like to live this way. But love itself, love without attachment to anything or anyone, is something I cannot grasp.

Perhaps I simply have not risen through this dense state of form to the point that I can imagine formlessness. My mind still attaches to the idea of there being a “what” I love or “who” I love, or at least that I could love every thing and every one. But to simply love, to be love, that love is all that is, so that there could not be anything else. That evades me.

What a thought, though! That seems to be what Jesus is teaching us. God is in this chair, this pencil, this person. God is in everything I see because God is in my mind. That means Love is in this chair, this pencil, this person. In fact, Love is in everything I see because love is in my mind. Love is in my mind. Love is my mind. Love is.

IV. Seeking and Finding, P 2

2 The search the ego undertakes is therefore bound to be defeated. And since it also teaches that it is your identification, its guidance leads you to a journey which must end in perceived self-defeat. For the ego cannot love, and in its frantic search for love it is seeking what it is afraid to find. The search is inevitable because the ego is part of your mind, and because of its source the ego is not wholly split off, or it could not be believed at all. For it is your mind that believes in it and gives existence to it. Yet it is also your mind that has the power to deny the ego’s existence, and you will surely do so when you realize exactly what the journey is on which the ego sets you.

When I look at the ego with detachment, I see how it searches frantically for love that it is determined not to find. It makes up ideas of what love is and how it is to be achieved. These ideas do not bring me to love but only to disappointment and confusion. The ego then blames the object of love and encourages me to keep looking until I find the right person, and then I will have love.

I used to feel so inadequate and was so needy that I was always seeking someone to make up for what I thought I lacked. I was never without a boyfriend or husband. Each time I thought I had finally found “the one” that would complete me, that would give me what I needed. Each time, I was disappointed and would discard that one and keep looking.

Finally, I found A Course in Miracles.

I stopped looking for the special relationship I thought I needed and began to heal my mind. I began to see how my search for love was never going to work because I kept looking outside myself, and that was not where I would find it. So, I learned to look within, and as I released each belief that was blocking my awareness of love’s presence, I found love. Imagine my surprise to discover I am love itself.

I still become confused about that sometimes, but once that idea takes hold in the mind, there is no going back. I am beginning to see love everywhere I look. It seems that everything is love. Love is the substance of creation. Now, when I don’t see love, I know I am perceiving through the ego mind again, and I place another errant thought on the altar.

Here is the thing about the ego I never forget. For it is your mind that believes in it and gives existence to it. The ego is not part of creation, and so does not actually exist, but my desire for it makes it real to me. I have the power to do this, a power I misuse but is, nonetheless, real. I am using this same power to deny the ego’s existence, and this is what I do as I forgive it and let it go.

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