ACIM Chapter 12. VII.  Looking Within, P 12-15

ACIM Chapter 12. VII.  Looking Within, P 12-15

VII. Looking Within, P 12

¹² When you look within and see me, it will be because you have decided to manifest truth. And as you manifest it you will see it both without and within. You will see it without because you saw it first within. Everything you behold without is a judgment of what you beheld within. If it is your judgment it will be wrong, for judgment is not your function. If it is the judgment of the Holy Spirit it will be right, for judgment is His function. You share His function only by judging as He does, reserving no judgment at all for yourself. You will judge against yourself, but He will judge for you.

It is hard to believe that I can look within and find such perfection and beauty that when I look out, I will find it there as well. It is hard to believe that perfection is in me, and it is hard to believe I could find it in the world I see. I believe it is true, though, no matter how hard it is to imagine. The reason I believe it is true is that Jesus says it is.

I am encouraged in this belief by knowing people who have awakened to this truth.

They seem to experience love and joy no matter what is going on in the world. And to the degree I have awakened, this is true for me and as awakening deepens into full liberation from the ego, I am certain I will experience it always. This tells me that what I see in the world is not reality, but judgment given form. This is why it is so important that we accept that we cannot judge and simply allow judgment to be accomplished for us.

When I look without and see something less than peace and joy and innocence, I know that this is what I have looked within and judged to be there. It becomes even more real to me when I look without and see it reflected there. But no matter how real it seems, it is still not true. It is just a judgment made by the ego mind which cannot judge because it is not its function to do so.

When I have one of those days in which I seem to be stuck in ego thinking, the ego judges me as a failure and doomed. This hardly helps the situation, so I ask the Holy Spirit for true judgment. He smiles gently and assures me it is all meaningless. As I accept His judgment, the darkness leaves me. My only part in this miracle is to recognize that I used my split mind to judge. Realizing my error, I then changed my mind and accepted the correction.

This is why I ask the Holy Spirit to correct my thinking and heal my mind.

It is why I ask for the Atonement for my thoughts. This is the same as setting aside my judgment and asking for His. I want to undo these judgments and allow Him to replace them with true judgment. I always seem to judge against myself, and He always judges me as innocent and as God created me.

VII. Looking Within, P 13

¹³ Remember, then, that whenever you look without and react unfavorably to what you see, you have judged yourself unworthy and have condemned yourself to death. The death penalty is the ego’s ultimate goal, for it fully believes that you are a criminal, as deserving of death as God knows you are deserving of life. The death penalty never leaves the ego’s mind, for that is what it always reserves for you in the end. Wanting to kill you as the final expression of its feeling for you, it lets you live but to await death. It will torment you while you live, but its hatred is not satisfied until you die. For your destruction is the one end toward which it works, and the only end with which it will be satisfied.

I always thought Jesus was exaggerating about the ego wanting to kill me. Or maybe that used to be true but isn’t anymore. At any rate, I resisted this idea and so simply ignored it. Lately, I have reconsidered. I see that it is true. Inevitably, we bring ourselves to death, and if we listen to the ego a lot and believe what the ego says, the stress of doing this brings us to death sooner.

It becomes even clearer that the ego wants me dead as my mind continues to heal and as I have started thinking that awakening is not only possible but inevitable. When even minor problems nag at me, I have noticed thoughts of death in my mind. It is the desperate attempt of the ego to kill me before I can awaken.

It might sound like this:

“I will never get free of this problem. My only escape is death.” It is such a ridiculous and blatant attempt that even in my most confused state, I know what is happening, and I can only shake my head at the ego’s determination to claim me. The first time this happened, I finally understood what Jesus meant when he said that the ego wanted me dead, and I understood why. Awakening is the end of the ego’s ever-weakening control. If it brings me to death before I can awaken, the dream continues, and that is the ego’s purpose, and the ego is very single-minded about its purpose.

I also understand more clearly that the ego mind believes in my guilt and that I deserve the death penalty for my sins. If I identify with the ego, I believe this about myself. That is why I must continue my vigilance for mind-watching. I notice thoughts that are not the thoughts I think with God, and I know they are not true thoughts, so I want them gone.

Once I have asked for healing, I focus my mind on the true thoughts.

I think about my reality as God’s Son, my holiness, and my oneness. I remind myself that the peace of God is my only goal. It is my one purpose. I allow the real thoughts about myself to rise up in my mind and fill me with truth until there is no room for ego ideas.

And I go through this process as often as needed. I don’t need it as often as I used to, and it is easier each time because I have learned to recognize the ego as the false idol it is. Thus, I know I want to reject it. I am becoming as single-minded as the ego. Remembering that I have one goal, one purpose, is helping me to let go of the dream that I am separated from my brother and from my Creator.

VII. Looking Within, P 14

¹⁴ The ego is not a traitor to God, to Whom treachery is impossible. But it is a traitor to you who believe that you have been treacherous to your Father. That is why the undoing of guilt is an essential part of the Holy Spirit’s teaching. For as long as you feel guilty you are listening to the voice of the ego, which tells you that you have been treacherous to God and therefore deserve death. You will think that death comes from God and not from the ego because, by confusing yourself with the ego, you believe that you want death. And from what you want God does not save you.

The ego thought system is built on guilt, and without guilt, it has no foundation on which to stand. So, the lesson is always one that leads us to understand that guilt is not real and that we are innocent. With that healing, the mind will naturally turn to God. It is only the belief that we have somehow betrayed God that keeps us clinging to this illusion.

We believe we have been treacherous to God and, therefore, deserve death.

God will not save us from what we want, so we must change our minds about what we want. That is our only function here. We must accept the Atonement for ourselves. All that means is that we forgive the idea that the Son of God is guilty of anything. We remember that we are innocent.

For a while, we do this one guilty thought at a time, coming to understand that it does not matter if we see ourselves as guilty or the other one as guilty. The ego thought system says that we are guilty but that we can get rid of the guilt by seeing it elsewhere. The Holy Spirit shows us that trying to get rid of guilt convinces us that guilt is real and frightening.

To be healed is to know that guilt is all smoke and mirrors. It is nothing made to appear threatening. It is a prison we made to keep our brothers separate from us and to keep ourselves separate from God. All that it takes to be free from this prison is to want to be free. In our desire for freedom, we receive freedom. But we must desire it for everyone. We must free all of our brothers if we want to be free.

VII. Looking Within, P 15

¹⁵ When you are tempted to yield to the desire for death, remember that I did not die. You will realize that this is true when you look within and see me. Would I have overcome death for myself alone? And would eternal life have been given me of the Father unless He had also given it to you? When you learn to make me manifest, you will never see death. For you will have looked upon the deathless in yourself, and you will see only the eternal as you look out upon a world that cannot die.

Death is not real, and we do not have to die. In fact, since it is not real, we do not die, but we believe in it, and so we have that experience. And yet, Jesus did not die. He says we will believe that when we look within and see him. Of course, he doesn’t mean to look within the brain, the little self, the separate self. I don’t look within Myron to find Jesus. I look within the mind to find the Christ. It is there right behind all the ego beliefs.

Right now, I still have some ego beliefs that manifest in my life.

However, that is not all that is in my mind. Christ is in my mind, and as many of those ego thoughts have fallen away, Christ manifests, and I see a life that is more peaceful and happier.

So, I continue the work I do as I look at my life to see what needs to be released and then ask the Holy Spirit to heal the beliefs that are the source of the remaining darkness. In this way, we begin to become aware of the Christ within. As we do this, we make it manifest in the world, and there will come a time when we will not manifest even an appearance of death because we will know our eternal nature.

To watch some of Regina Dawn Akers snippets of early teachings, CLICK HERE.