ACIM Chapter 12. IV. Seeking and Finding, P 5-7

ACIM Chapter 12. IV. Seeking and Finding, P 5-7

IV. Seeking and Finding, P 5

5 You will undertake a journey because you are not at home in this world. And you will search for your home whether you realize where it is or not. If you believe it is outside you the search will be futile, for you will be seeking it where it is not. You do not remember how to look within for you do not believe your home is there. Yet the Holy Spirit remembers it for you, and He will guide you to your home because that is His mission. As He fulfils His mission He will teach you yours, for your mission is the same as His. By guiding your brothers home you are but following Him.

We are not home, and we sense that. We begin the search from the moment we get here. We are searching whether we know it or not, whether we look in the right direction or not. Most of us look outside ourselves for home. We look toward a partner to make us feel like we are home. We have children to give us the feeling we have a home. Or a house, and if that doesn’t work, a better house. Maybe a job that fulfills or makes us feel special.

But we can only look in one direction if we want to know our home. We must look within because that is where home is. Our confusion is within, and our world is within, but so is our home. It is a delusion that we find anything outside. All is within. It seems like the world we made to fulfill our fantasy is taking up all the room and that there is a little sliver of reality in there. But that, too, is a delusion caused by our desire for the illusion.

In truth, our mind is vast and filled with Home, with just a tiny sliver of a dream state from which we are awakening. When we do awaken, we will throw off the dream, and soon, it will not even be a memory to disturb the perfect peace of our holy mind. The way we awaken is to follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance in all things, and from our healed mind, we join Him in His mission and lead our brothers out as well.

IV. Seeking and Finding, P 6

6 Behold the Guide your Father gave you, that you might learn you have eternal life. For death is not your Father’s Will nor yours, and whatever is true is the Will of the Father. You pay no price for life for that was given you, but you do pay a price for death, and a very heavy one. If death is your treasure, you will sell everything else to purchase it. And you will believe that you have purchased it, because you have sold everything else. Yet you cannot sell the Kingdom of Heaven. Your inheritance can neither be bought nor sold. There can be no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole and all His extensions are like Him.

My first thought upon reading this was to wonder what I am selling to get death. How does this work? Obviously, I am selling my wholeness, but how do I do this? I asked the Holy Spirit to help me understand and to alert me when I was actually doing it. Here are some things He showed me.

I have a friend in financial need. Before deciding if I can give to her, I think about other people I give to and categorize them according to their importance. How does this buy me death? Separating those who are important and worthy of my help is a way I keep the idea of separation and only those who know their wholeness know eternal life.

Last night I was thinking about my body as a communication device.

I wondered how I could use it for something else, and what came into my mind was a lifetime of dieting, of trying to make the body look attractive to others in many little ways. I had wanted people to look at me and think I looked good, to be impressed with me.

This is not communication because it is limited in what is communicated and to whom. I want others to know a certain version of myself, and I want to use this to keep us separate, divided into groups according to their size, shape, and general attractiveness. I am willing to sell out my wholeness for the very temporary approval of others. Again, without an awareness of wholeness, there is no life.

Another one that came to me is how I might use people to meet my own perceived special needs. I might call on a friend to spend time with me because I am lonely rather than because I want to share love. I might give to my children so that they will give me something in return, such as appreciation, rather than giving from the sheer joy of giving.

Giving to get is just another way to sell out my wholeness.

And what do I get from all of this? I get death because living as a separate self with all these unfulfilled needs is not life. God is Life, and He gave me life in my creation. I still have it, but to know I have it, I must let go of these symbols of death, even unto the strongest symbol, the death of the body itself. You would think I would understand this since even this body death turns out to be a joke.

Using the body to fulfill ego appetites, gossip, treat others unkindly, speak harshly to someone, judge and condemn, attack and defend are all ways I sell life to purchase death. Yesterday, I became very upset with someone I love. I could have reversed that whole thing by pausing long enough to remember the truth about us both. Instead, I let the ego run rampant in my mind. It weaved all sorts of death stories. Today, my mind is clear, and I see how I invested in death yesterday instead of life. The ego thinks I am guilty for this, but I see it as a valuable lesson, and I am grateful for it.

IV. Seeking and Finding, P 7

7 The Atonement is not the price of your wholeness, but it is the price of your awareness of your wholeness. For what you chose to “sell” had to be kept for you, since you could not “buy” it back. Yet you must invest in it, not with money but with spirit. For spirit is will, and will is the “price” of the Kingdom. Your inheritance awaits only the recognition that you have been redeemed. The Holy Spirit guides you into life eternal, but you must relinquish your investment in death, or you will not see life though it is all around you.

I understand the price I have paid to embrace death. I understand it perfectly. And I see what it looks like in my life. I know what it costs me to let it go and why I want to do this. I stand in utter astonishment at my own stubborn insistence on holding onto the little self I made. Sometimes, I scare myself with my stubbornness. What if I never let it go? What if I can’t? Most upsetting of all, what if I am entirely wrong about everything? This is the fear that the truth is not true.

I became aware of what I was doing to myself.

I started letting go of the blocks to the truth, and the ego pulled out the big guns. The ego voice shouted at me about doubt and fear, insisting that this was just not possible and that I obviously could not, would not, succeed. Probably, the ego says, because it is all nonsense. Just ask anyone… anyone not in the same ridiculous spiritual quest as I am.

These thoughts used to terrify me, but I went through them and discovered they only have power as I give them meaning. Nothing happens when I go through them without slowing down to stew in them, and I continue on my way to the truth. Sometimes, though, thoughts that the truth is not true find a place in my mind to take root, and they temporarily shake me. Fortunately, I am no longer interested in feeding them, so the roots are shallow, and the thoughts are easily uprooted.

Today, I am listening to the Voice for God tell me about life everlasting, love without conditions, union, joy, and peace. This Voice speaks to me all through the day and every day. Today, I am listening. The ego keeps trying to pull my attention away from that Voice, but I am enthralled with the Voice for God and its sweet promises. The ego is having no luck.