ACIM Chapter 12. IV. Seeking and Finding, P 3, 4

ACIM Chapter 12. IV. Seeking and Finding, P 3, 4

IV. Seeking and Finding, P 3

3 It is surely obvious that no one wants to find what would utterly defeat him. Being unable to love, the ego would be totally inadequate in love’s presence, for it could not respond at all. Then, you would have to abandon the ego’s guidance, for it would be quite apparent that it had not taught you the response you need. The ego will therefore distort love, and teach you that love really calls forth the responses the ego can teach. Follow its teaching, then, and you will search for love, but will not recognize it.

And so now we see why it is that the ego will not lead us to love. It has no recognition of love and no response to love. If we accepted love as it truly is, we would abandon the ego’s guidance because it could not help us. The ego has a prime objective: to continue its existence. It will never help us do something that would make it useless to us. The ego will never lead us to love, even if it could, because we would no longer need the ego.

Love as seen through the Holy Spirit and what passes for love as perceived through the ego are radically different. So much so that it leaves me wondering how I could have bought into the ego’s perception of love for so long. Yesterday, I became open to seeing love in everything, and it was a lovely day.

This morning, I woke up to hear the ego mutterings of gloom and doom.

Suddenly, instead of experiencing the love of God, I was looking at people in my mind as enemies or potential enemies, and setting up defenses. This made me wonder what I had been dreaming all night to leave me so ego-driven this morning.

The truth is, though, that the ego is our default mind here in ego land. We must remain vigilant for the ego thinking in our mind and deliberately choose God. As I lay there working out strategies to get life lined up the way I felt I needed it, to get people to do what would be best for me, I realized how insane this was. I saw the contrast between how this made me feel and how I felt yesterday.

I was having trouble shifting gears, so I reached over to my phone and put on a meditation I have been using with a Pathways of Light course on accepting the Holy Spirit’s help. This meditation reminded me that there are no private thoughts. I realized immediately that all these “I need” thoughts are personal to me, and so are not real thoughts. This reminded me that my belief that I need people to fulfill my needs is a block to my awareness of love’s presence.

The distress I had been feeling, and the need to defend myself faded away as I chose the Holy Spirit’s guidance over the ego’s guidance. Peace flooded my mind, and the sluggishness of the moment before dissipated as I became energized and happy to start the day. Thank You, God. I love You, God.

IV. Seeking and Finding, P 4

4 Do you realize that the ego must set you on a journey which cannot but lead to a sense of futility and depression? To seek and not to find is hardly joyous. Is this the promise you would keep? The Holy Spirit offers you another promise, and one that will lead to joy. For His promise is always, “Seek and you will find,” and under His guidance you cannot be defeated. His is the journey to accomplishment, and the goal He sets before you He will give you. For He will never deceive God’s Son whom He loves with the Love of the Father.

Perhaps, like me, you thought you could not really depend on the Bible quote, “Seek and ye shall find.” Years of seeking had brought me very little peace and happiness. I didn’t see where it got me any closer to God, either. Now I know why. It was because I was asking the ego to show me the way. I was seeking happiness through the ego, whose directive is to seek and do not find.

Once I began to study the Course, all of that turned around. I was seeking through the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit loves me with the Love of the Father. The Holy Spirit wants me to find and so makes it possible for me to do so, actually assures me that I will do so. Through the study of the Course, I learned how to ask and was given the process that would bring me the peace and happiness I longed for.

I learned that the blocks to Love are the ego thoughts in my mind.

I believe insane things, and those beliefs show up as insane thoughts. But I learned that I could look at those thoughts with the Holy Spirit, and in so doing, I would realize their impact on me and become willing to let them go. Once I decided I didn’t want them, the Holy Spirit could remove them from my mind. Without so much of the insanity of ego thinking, I became happier and more peaceful.

I learned that to be happy, I must be happy with my brothers and sisters. If I project onto them, I cannot know my union with them. It is essential that I regain the memory of oneness because we go home as one. With the healing of my mind, the desire for union became stronger than my desire to be separate from them, to defend against them, and to push them away in all the many ways I did in the past. Now, I cannot see anyone as separate from me.

I cannot imagine not being affected by everything that happens to any part of our one self. How could that even be? And when I forget what it means to be one, when I think I need to get my personal needs met, or when I think I must win over someone else, I quickly and gratefully turn to the Holy Spirit to heal my mind of such insane thoughts.

Without the ego’s guilt and fear of the past, I realized that what I really want is God.

I want to remember God and remember my Self. I want to see in God and think in God. To be aware of His presence in my mind and my presence in His Mind. I want to share all that I am with All that He Is. I want to know that I am one with God. This is what I seek now, and thus this is what I must find, because I seek it of One Whose function is to lead me to what I seek. I seek it for the entire Sonship.

What we teach ourselves in the hour before sleep is important. Jesus tells this: How you wake is the sign of how you have used sleep. ²To whom did you give it? (ACIM, T-8.IX.4:1-2) To enjoy a wonderful sleep meditation by Cate Grieves, CLICK HERE.