ACIM Chapter 13. I. Guiltlessness and Invulnerability, P 4-6

ACIM Chapter 13. I. Guiltlessness and Invulnerability, P 4-6

I. Guiltlessness and Invulnerability, P 4

4 The journey the Son of God has set himself is useless indeed, but the journey on which his Father sets him is one of release and joy. The Father is not cruel, and His Son cannot hurt himself. The retaliation that he fears and that he sees will never touch him, for although he believes in it the Holy Spirit knows it is not true. The Holy Spirit stands at the end of time, where you must be because He is with you. He has already undone everything unworthy of the Son of God, for such was His mission, given Him by God. And what God gives has always been.

Man, this is good news and strange news at the same time. This journey through time is an illusion. We are already at the end of time and have already been judged innocent. We are already abundant, loved, and safe; we have already overcome sickness, suffering, and death. Or did any of it ever, even for an instant, touch us, except in our imaginations?

However, we set ourselves on this quest, so we must think we are on it and must achieve our goal. We were given the Holy Spirit to help us do this. The Holy Spirit is the holder of the truth and the Undoer of all insane ideas in the mind and of the ego mind itself. Once we have slain the dragon and saved the day, we will discover we made up the dragon and that the day had been saved the moment it was perceived as in danger.

Even though nothing is happening, it must happen because we chose it.

In order to extricate ourselves from this dream, we must choose to awaken. That, really, is all there is to it. The desire to continue dreaming is the only dragon in this quest, and we save the day by awakening the Son from the dream. We do it through forgiveness and acceptance. We surrender our armor and our sword and allow ourselves to be led from our sad little story into eternity, where we reside in the peace of God.

Everything we do toward that purpose is really just an undoing. Here is how I imagine it. I have awakened to the truth that there seems to be a dream from which to awaken. I have turned around on my path and am walking back the way I came. As I do so, all that I have imagined I did is being undone. So, I look at what I see there: the judgments and grievances, the sickness and suffering, the fear and the guilt. I ask my Guide to help me let go of these beliefs, and to see they were never the truth, but just stories within my story. In so doing, am changing nothing but my mind, but it must be changed.

I. Guiltlessness and Invulnerability, P 5

5 You will see me as you learn the Son of God is guiltless. He has always sought his guiltlessness, and he has found it. For everyone is seeking to escape from the prison he has made, and the way to find release is not denied him. Being in him, he has found it. When he finds it is only a matter of time, and time is but an illusion. For the Son of God is guiltless now, and the brightness of his purity shines untouched forever in God’s Mind. God’s Son will always be as he was created. Deny your world and judge him not, for his eternal guiltlessness is in the Mind of his Father, and protects him forever.

This paragraph makes it very clear that the Son of God is guiltless and will discover this for himself. It is a done deal. He will discover his innocence because it is in his mind right now. And it is also clear that the Son of God is me, is you, is everyone together. But to know we are the Son of God, we must know ourselves as one and as guiltless.

Yesterday, I was judging someone and finding him guilty.

For a moment, I was convinced of his guilt. I had all the proof. But then I remembered that if this one is guilty, then I am guilty because we are not separate. I am not free until he is free. So, I asked the Holy Spirit to correct my thinking. Suddenly, I was free of the guilt. It was just gone. Thank you, Holy Spirit.

This is not the first time I have rejected the ego’s interpretation of events and asked the Holy Spirit to look with me. Having practiced this for a while now, I realize that it is quick and easy if I catch it right away. However, if I get mesmerized by my dream story, it becomes harder to let the judgment go. So, I stay vigilant for those grievances, and the Holy Spirit and I deal with them right away.

I. Guiltlessness and Invulnerability, P 6

6 When you have accepted the Atonement for yourself, you will realize there is no guilt in God’s Son. And only as you look upon him as guiltless can you understand his oneness. For the idea of guilt brings a belief in condemnation of one by another, projecting separation in place of unity. You can condemn only yourself, and by so doing you cannot know that you are God’s Son. You have denied the condition of his being, which is his perfect blamelessness. Out of love he was created, and in love he abides. Goodness and mercy have always followed him, for he has always extended the Love of his Father.

I was created out of love, and I abide in love. This is true regardless of the dream state that seems to be my life. But my experience is not one of love, at least not all the time yet. It will be, though, as I allow the idea of guilt to be removed from my mind and I begin to live the happy dream in anticipation of the end of the dream.

Now, I know the difference between love and fear, and I know that I can decide against fear when I choose to.

Here is something I wrote in my Daily Lesson journal.

“This morning, as I let my mind settle into the choices I would make, I realized that what I want is for the day to continue just as it is now. I feel happy and peaceful and deeply in love with God. What else could I want for my day? I am overwhelmed with gratitude. What happened to that sense of loss I experienced last night at the thought of leaving the weekend behind? I made a different decision as I used a different advisor. I let go of what I thought the world needs to be and let the Holy Spirit show me what it can be.”

For a while this morning, that deep peace and love of God pervaded my very being. Then, I was looking at a picture on Facebook, and I had an instant of judgment. It wasn’t even a fully formed thought, just a feeling of judgment, and the peace vaporized just like that. There was a moment of panic as I realized what had happened to my peace. I traded it for judgment. I cannot judge a brother and be at peace nor retain the state of perfect love.

Once I thought about it, I knew what had happened and what to do about it.

I had, without conscious awareness, chosen to ask the ego to help me decide what that picture meant. From there, I decided what could be done about it. In this case, I quickly decided who was to blame and was relieved that it was not my problem and that I could ignore it. Separation, and then more separation.

Then, I made a different choice, a different decision, using the Holy Spirit as my advisor. I canceled my original question by remembering that I forgot to decide with Spirit. I asked Him to interpret the picture for me and I stepped back in my mind and waited for His correction, knowing I wanted a new way to see this. Immediately, I felt the conflict melt away and the peace return.

This quick judgment of a picture on Facebook seemed such a little thing. How important could it be? But there is no hierarchy of illusions. All wrong-minded thinking, whether it seems big or little to me, causes a lack of peace, and lack of peace is as complete as peace. This process of using the rules for decision-making takes time and patience, but this is what time is for. This is what the world is for. I am literally undoing the ego in my mind.