ACIM Chapter 12. VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 5, 6

ACIM Chapter 12. VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 5, 6

VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 5

5 You have but to ask for this memory, and you will remember. Yet the memory of God cannot shine in a mind that has obliterated it and wants to keep it so. For the memory of God can dawn only in a mind that chooses to remember, and that has relinquished the insane desire to control reality. You who cannot even control yourself should hardly aspire to control the universe. But look upon what you have made of it, and rejoice that it is not so.

First, Jesus tells us that we can have the memory of God simply by asking for it. Then he explains why we don’t have it. Having obliterated that memory, we want to keep things the way they are. We want to keep our separate-self story going. We want to be that self and tell ourselves that we made this world, and we control it.

That is what this is all about. I am Myron for better and for worse. I even take some kind of perverse pleasure in the worst, vying with my brothers to be more screwed up than them. Don’t try to tell me how perfect I am; I will just argue for my shortcomings while trying to keep the world in balance, as I secretly imagine that I am at least better than you.

I behold my kingdom, and I strive daily to maintain it.

To keep it going, and to keep the drama, comedy, and tragedies alive and active. Just ask me, and I will tell you how to fix your problems and how the politicians should be doing their jobs. I will tell you the best way to deal with morning sickness and why we have more cancer now than in the past.

It doesn’t deter me at all that my advice changes by the day and sometimes by the hour. It doesn’t shake my belief that I am in control to see the whole world going to hell in a handbasket. I have a problem? I judge the problem, and then I find solutions. You have a problem? I’ll do the same thing for you. Are you spiritual? My spiritual ego has the words to make my advice sound spiritual.

Everyone is my enemy, but forewarned is forearmed, and I have many defenses at my disposal. I have spent my life collecting these defenses and learning how to wield them to best advantage. A sharp word here, a pretended humbleness there. I learned how to run away, how to divorce myself from my problems, how to hide from them, and how to put them away and pretend they don’t exist. I learned very well, too well, how to project them onto someone else in an effort to be rid of them. And I have learned to pretend that they are then gone.

All the world is a projection of yesterday and all the days before it.

All the problems, as I perceive them, are past problems I have projected onto today. And all the solutions are past solutions formed to look like something new and projected onto today. We know this deep inside and justify it by saying things like we need to study history so we don’t repeat it. Then we repeat it.

All of this was once true for me. Things are different now.

I learned to stop doing all this. I learned to stop using the ego mind to judge each situation and then, based on that judgment, decide what the solution must be. Instead, I practiced doing it differently. Now, I ask the Holy Spirit to judge the situation first, and based on that judgment, I allow His solution to show itself to me.

I now understand that in my defenselessness, my safety lies. I see that when I defend myself, I increase my fear. When my fear is greater, my defenses seem every more important. I feel like I need to defend against all this fear, and the belief in this fear calls for new and ever more elaborate defenses. And on and on, the endless cycle goes. But I have invited a higher power to overturn the ego’s regime, and I have learned to look at fears without defense and let them be undone for me.

When my attention is focused on the past, I change my mind by allowing myself to rest in God. This is a step toward freedom from the illusion of separation I cannot surrender the insane belief that I can control the world until I stop bringing the past into the present, thus ensuring the future will remain equally insane. I want a new, fresh present moment, and I want to be aware of it. So, I have to get my head out of my… past.

The world I made is not worth saving.

It has no value at all. I am nearly convinced that the self I made is worthless as well. All of it is without meaning of any kind and completely without value. I am slowly and gently letting it go. What will the world look like without fear and guilt projected onto it? What will I look like without Myron projected onto me? How will I live in the world while I remain here? Who will I be, and how will I feel if not like Myron?

I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I want to find out.

VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 6

6 Son of God, be not content with nothing! What is not real cannot be seen and has no value. God could not offer His Son what has no value, nor could His Son receive it. You were redeemed the instant you thought you had deserted Him. Everything you made has never been, and is invisible because the Holy Spirit does not see it. Yet what He does see is yours to behold, and through His vision your perception is healed. You have made invisible the only truth that this world holds. Valuing nothing, you have sought nothing. By making nothing real to you, you have seen it. But it is not there. And Christ is invisible to you because of what you have made visible to yourself.

From the Daily Mail

The world you see around you is nothing but an illusion.

That’s according to cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman who claims we’re being tricked into believing our own reality.

He believes that what we are seeing around us is simply a façade that guides our way around a far more complex and hidden matrix.

Galileo once wrote: ‘I think that tastes, odors, colours, and so on reside in consciousness.

‘Hence if the living creature were removed, all these qualities would be annihilated.’

And Hoffman says, in some ways, he agrees with this statement.

‘Neuroscientists tell us that they are creating, in real time, all the shapes, objects, colours, and motions that we see,’ he said in a Ted Talk.

‘It feels like we’re just taking a snapshot of this room the way it is, but in fact, we’re constructing everything that we see.

‘We don’t construct the whole world at once. We construct what we need in the moment.’

This is exactly what we are doing.

And what we see is actually in our minds. Through projection, we give it the illusion of being “out there,” but it goes nowhere because there is nowhere to go. We decide to see the impossible (separation), and so we do. But it seems we cannot believe in what we made and at the same time, see what is real.

Through the study and practice of A Course in Miracles, we learn that this is what is happening, that we are done with the world we made up, and that we are ready to see what is real. Jesus is telling us something very simple. He is saying that we see it because we value it. So, in order to see reality, we only need to decide that the illusion of separation is not valuable to us, and we can let it go. Then, what has always been there but invisible to us because we wanted to see something else instead will be made visible again.

Jesus has used the idea of a veil to help us understand.

He said there is a thin veil between what we see and what is actually there. Have you ever peeked behind the veil? I have. I just haven’t made a permanent decision to recognize that the veil is an illusion, too. I’m working on it, though. I stay aware of the illusions I am most attached to and am willing to see through them to what is actually true.

I have done this one little idea at a time, but I think I am ready to let go of some big chunks of the illusion. It feels hard sometimes because I become afraid. I’m not sure what I am afraid of; sometimes, I think it is the fear itself. But I never stop giving it my attention and all the willingness I can.

I never make an exception. Letting go of an illusion might take a while, but I never refuse to try. There is no grievance, no false idea that I will refuse to confront. I will succeed because, as Jesus says, I was redeemed the instant I thought I had deserted God.