ACIM Chapter 12. VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 1, 2

ACIM Chapter 12. VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 1, 2

VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love

1 Do you really believe that you can kill the Son of God? The Father has hidden His Son safely within Himself, and kept him far away from your destructive thoughts, but you know neither the Father nor the Son because of them. You attack the real world every day and every hour and minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot see it. If you seek love in order to attack it, you will never find it. For if love is sharing, how can you find it except through itself? Offer it and it will come to you, because it is drawn to itself. But offer attack and love will remain hidden, for it can live only in peace.

How is it that I attack the real world every day, every hour, every minute?

First, I realize that the real world is love, and love is sharing. Then I realize what is opposite to that. An attack in any form is not love and is not shared, and though an attack does not destroy reality, it keeps reality from my awareness. Though I cannot lose God and Self, I can be unaware of God and Self, and it is as if I have lost it.

I am eternal, perfect, and full of joy and peace. These are not things I have; I am these things. I am divine in my nature. I am one with all things, part of God, safe, and complete. Even though I have chosen against my true nature to the point that I have lost any memory of what I am, and even though I live as if I am something completely opposite of that, it is not the truth. Believing it, I suffer. But I am beginning to awaken from this dream of separation.

I began this awakening process as I learned to recognize attack and decide against it.

It is odd that I had to learn to recognize something so far from my true nature, but I had become so accustomed to living in fear that my life as I experienced it seemed natural and necessary. I felt I had to defend myself, and one defends only through attack.

Here is what I discovered. When I am angry, that is an attack. It is an attack on my true nature, which is love. It doesn’t matter what triggered the attack thoughts and feelings. Blame, cause, and justification are completely irrelevant. Only that I am angry, and anger keeps me in hell, matters.

I can choose to release anger and ask the Holy Spirit to heal my mind of the belief it has any value to me at all. This is done regardless of circumstances. I simply desire to be free, and if the desire to be free is greater than the desire to build my defenses by feeding my anger, then it is done. It requires only trust in Jesus, in God.

As Jesus tells us, we don’t have to believe or even understand what he says.

We only need to trust enough to do it. I can muster that much trust. After all, what do I have to lose? When I am free of anger, I am free of what kept me from love. Letting anger go, I become aware of love and love naturally shares itself. It flows from me to everyone. As it does so, it is reinforced in my own mind. As I give, I receive.

This is as true of guilt, whether directed inward or outward. It is as true of depression, jealousy, spite, fear, lack, and loss. These all seem different, with different causes and different effects, but they are all the same. They are the same because they are not love and thus they are attack. They attack reality. The Son is attacked, as is the Father. Or each one, as it appears in its special form, can just as easily be denied. True denial is very powerful because it is a return to reality.

It requires only that we be vigilant for what is an attack on God and that we be willing to receive healing.

Our part is simple and not hard to do. It may feel hard as we resist it, but if we stay persistent, we receive much support, and our continued success will motivate us further. Jesus said that we can do anything he asks of us. When my resistance is strong, I find it helpful to remind myself of this.

In the beginning, I was deeply discouraged by my level of resistance. But then I came to understand that it was not that I was lazy or that this was too much for me, but only that I did not believe I was worthy of this level of effort or this lofty goal, much less its conclusion. I know differently now.

VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 2

2 God’s Son is as safe as his Father, for the Son knows his Father’s protection and cannot fear. His Father’s Love holds him in perfect peace, and needing nothing, he asks for nothing. Yet he is far from you whose Self he is, for you chose to attack him and he disappeared from your sight into his Father. He did not change, but you did. For a split mind and all its works were not created by the Father, and could not live in the knowledge of Him.

So, I booted myself out of Heaven, separated myself from God and from Self, and lost my awareness of what I am and where I am. I see myself as a body in a world of form with many problems and with solutions that never actually solve anything. To make matters more confusing, I don’t remember doing this, and on top of that, I believe in what I made. There is a belief that I am not fully aware of, but that affects me. That belief is that I did something monumentally wrong and am guilty.

What a mess!

But there is a solution that does work. There is an answer to all of this, and it is in the mind that made the problem as it appears to me. The solution is in the mind right next to the perceived problem. I can choose the answer as easily as I choose the problem, and I will. The question is, when will I make that choice? I can take time, and in fact, I can take all the time I can stand. But all this time I suffer, and sometimes terribly.

There is a draw toward awakening. I am tired of suffering, and the desire not to suffer is the first step toward the door that leads me out of the dream state of separation. I feel Love’s draw, which is a giant step forward. The key is in my hand. And I have been throwing off the encumbrances that seem to hold me back. I do this through forgiveness. I forgive and forgive and forgive. As I begin to lighten this load of false beliefs through forgiveness, I feel more confident that I can let this tiny mad idea go and return to Reality.

Sometimes, people ask me how to forgive.

First, I suggest they read about forgiveness so they understand how the Course uses the term. Then I point out that one can say they forgive a belief, or they can say they accept the atonement for a belief. But for it to have an effect, one must mean it. I eventually noticed in my practice that I didn’t necessarily mean it when I forgave a belief. I would say that I was letting the belief go to the Holy Spirit to be corrected, but there was resistance to this idea. Sometimes, I wanted to be free of the belief’s effects but didn’t want to change my mind in any significant way.

But even after discovering my hidden agenda, I still practiced forgiveness.

I looked at it as instructing my mind. The mind is very powerful, and it is my servant. It brings me whatever I ask for. For much of my life, I wanted to judge, defend, and attack. I thought it kept me safe and in control, but actually, it only kept me feeling vulnerable and afraid. Since I had spent so much time instructing the mind to give me what was essentially causing my suffering, I had to spend some time convincing myself that there was another way and that it was open to me. Then I had to spend time instructing my mind to bring me that instead.

This has paid off. I still judge sometimes, but I know that it is an error. From this perspective of believing I am separate from God, I can never know enough to judge anything. What I know now is that I have the Holy Spirit in my mind, and It knows everything. So, instead of trying to judge on partial or wrong information, I ask the Holy Spirit to judge for me. To the degree I can set aside my own opinion, the answer I receive is helpful to the situation. Life is a lot easier now.

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