ACIM Chapter 12. VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 3, 4

ACIM Chapter 12. VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 3, 4

VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 3

3 When you made visible what is not true, what is true became invisible to you. Yet it cannot be invisible in itself, for the Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity. It is invisible to you because you are looking at something else. Yet it is no more up to you to decide what is visible and what is invisible, than it is up to you to decide what reality is. What can be seen is what the Holy Spirit sees. The definition of reality is God’s, not yours. He created it, and He knows what it is. You who knew have forgotten, and unless He had given you a way to remember you would have condemned yourself to oblivion.

Holy moly, if God had not given us His Voice to remind us of the truth, we would be lost forever. We would have condemned ourselves to oblivion! As it is, we have hidden the truth from ourselves and think we have undone it. It is not up to us to decide on reality because we did not create it. Evidently, we can look away from it and see something else instead, believing we have destroyed reality and made up our own. Still, reality is perfectly protected from our illusions.

The way we regain Heaven is to listen to the Voice for God. The Holy Spirit sees reality clearly, and since the Holy Spirit is in our minds, we can learn to see reality again. We are not lost because it is not God’s Will that His Son be lost. He has safeguarded us and kept our Self from harm. He has also given us a way to regain our memory and return home.

This is why it is so important that we learn to hear the Holy Spirit.

Jesus says that we can learn to hear only this Voice even here. This is why I sit with Spirit every morning and ask Him for His words and why I ask all day long for His guidance. I don’t yet hear only His Voice, but I hear it more clearly as I make the decision for His Voice over and over again. He was given to us so that we could hear Him and see with the same clarity as He sees.

There is no one who cannot learn to hear His Voice, and all it takes is desire and practice. I hear His Voice as ideas and inspiration. I hear His Voice as thoughts that are not the thoughts I would think on my own. And always, I hear His Voice when I step back and let Him answer a call for help through me. Sometimes, I hear His Voice through another as they say what it is I need to hear. I hear His Voice most clearly in the words that seem to write themselves on the page, and that is why I journal. His Voice is always available to me if I am open to hearing it.

The fact is that I must hear a voice. The choice I have is which voice I choose to listen to. I will choose an advisor, and the advisor I choose will be either the Holy Spirit or ego. Decisions are not made in isolation. All decisions are made in union. I am learning to choose to be in union with the Holy Spirit every time as I realize that not only do I not want to make decisions on my own, but that I cannot.

VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 4

4 Because of your Father’s Love you can never forget Him, for no one can forget what God Himself placed in his memory. You can deny it, but you cannot lose it. A Voice will answer every question you ask, and a vision will correct the perception of everything you see. For what you have made invisible is the only truth, and what you have not heard is the only Answer. God would reunite you with yourself, and did not abandon you in your distress. You are waiting only for Him, and do not know it. Yet His memory shines in your mind and cannot be obliterated. It is no more past than future, being forever always.

I cannot fail to return to reality because the truth is in my mind where God placed it, and it cannot be obliterated. It is not God’s Will that it be unavailable to me. This feels very encouraging to me when I get caught up in ego thinking and become confused. I can feel lost and helpless when this happens, but I know I can find my way back, so I never feel hopeless. Sorry, Mulder. The truth is not out there; it is within.

I understand now that my every question and my every desire is answered. Sometimes, I don’t recognize it as such, but that is because I become confused about the question. My desire is happiness and peace, and when I misjudge the situation, I might ask for something that will bring me distress. Here is an example I wrote about while I was working.

Something happened that made me think that I had lost a customer.

I was very upset, and I kept thinking about what this would mean to me—the lost income and the lost status. This seemed unfair because I had done such a good job for this customer. I felt upset and discouraged. Clearly, I did not feel like God’s precious child, loved, cherished, and safe.

I felt this way because I had judged the situation. I saw something that made me think I probably lost a customer. Then I asked the ego to advise me as to what that meant. The ego’s judgment was that I was being unfairly treated and that I was endangered by this customer. I was a victim of his unfairness. Because of my judgment of the situation, my question was, how do I defend myself? And, of course, the ego has a lot of solutions that only make matters worse and that make me feel even more vulnerable.

Seeing this, I canceled out that judgment. I said that I did not have a question after all because I forgot what to decide. Then, I decided differently. I chose to ask the Holy Spirit for His judgment instead. In other words, I made Him my advisor in this situation rather than the ego. I completely surrendered the entire situation and all my thoughts about it to my Guide. The first thing that happened was that I felt peaceful about it.

Then, I realized something.

I needed to release the idea that I was unfairly treated and that I was a victim. What happened simply happened, and it is not bad or good. I don’t know what to do about it if anything, but I am open in case there are directions for me to follow. I noticed the ego trying to get my attention by offering me those I might blame, but in my surrender, I lost interest in defending myself. Without defense, my fear began to fall away.

My answer seems to be that I should do nothing. This answer would have seemed woefully inadequate if I was still judging the situation with the ego. Now, it seems to make perfect sense. There is nothing for me to do right now, so I will not do anything. Will I save this account? I don’t know. When it is time to act, I will do so as guided.

I am content with that answer because I know something now that I was blind to when I was listening to my ego. Keeping this person as a customer is not my goal. Being his savior is. I am his savior as I see him for the perfect divine self he is and as I love him without expectations. As I accept my part as savior of the world, I am saved as well. I am at peace, and it is a peace that cannot be disturbed by outward appearances.

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