ACIM Chapter 13. XI. The Peace of Heaven, 5

ACIM Chapter 13. XI. The Peace of Heaven, 5

XI. The Peace of Heaven, P 5

5 You whose mind is darkened by doubt and guilt, remember this: God gave the Holy Spirit to you, and gave Him the mission to remove all doubt and every trace of guilt that His dear Son has laid upon himself. It is impossible that this mission fail. Nothing can prevent what God would have accomplished from accomplishment. Whatever your reactions to the Holy Spirit’s Voice may be, whatever voice you choose to listen to, whatever strange thoughts may occur to you, God’s Will is done. You will find the peace in which He established you, because He does not change His Mind. He is invariable as the peace in which you dwell, and of which the Holy Spirit reminds you.

This is a wonderful paragraph! Jesus is very clear that we cannot fail because what God Wills is done. Because it does seem like I have failed many times, I am grateful to be reminded that this is not possible. In the Psychotherapy section, I was further reassured when I read this. ⁸Retrogression is temporary. ⁹The overall direction is one of progress toward the truth. (ACIM, P-2.I.1:8-9)

The following is from an older journal, which I am keeping because it was so helpful to me.

Well, this is kind of funny. This morning, I hesitated to write. My mind was dark with doubt and guilt, and I didn’t feel worthy to go to Spirit for words. I prepared everything to write and just sat here talking to Jesus about it and asking for comfort and clarity. The feeling I kept receiving was that I should trust the process to just do the work.

So, I looked at today’s paragraph and had to cry and then laugh. No wonder He was nudging me to do the work. The work this morning is perfect for what ails me. It is the answer to the question I was asking. I don’t have to be concerned about my errors or apparent failures. Failure is impossible. God’s Will is done, so I will find His peace.

I don’t always understand the process as it is happening, but I do trust it even when I seem to be failing in it. Here is an example of this. Recently, I started having a problem with a tooth, and there was a lot of pain. I had a very strong nudge to use this as a healing opportunity.

I read this from the Manual for Teachers:

1 Healing must occur in exact proportion to which the valuelessness of sickness is recognized. One need but say, “There is no gain at all to me in this” and he is healed. But to say this, one first must recognize certain facts. First, it is obvious that decisions are of the mind, not of the body. If sickness is but a faulty problem-solving approach, it is a decision. And if it is a decision, it is the mind and not the body that makes it. The resistance to recognizing this is enormous, because the existence of the world as you perceive it depends on the body being the decision-maker.

This was such an incredible section! I made a wrong decision, and all I needed to do was change my mind and make a new decision. In retrospect, I see that I pretty much ignored the part where he says that resistance will be strong. So, I started working with this idea that the tooth was not the problem, but rather, it was my mind, my thoughts, and my decisions. I felt so strongly that I was guided to do this that I was very excited and confident about it. What a promise Jesus makes us! He tells us, “What is the single requisite for this shift in perception? It is simply this; the recognition that sickness is of the mind, and has nothing to do with the body.”

And he makes it sound so easy.

I decided on the tooth problem, and now I have changed my mind and chose health instead. I worked with this idea for a couple of painful weeks, and I was very disappointed that, in the end, I had to give in and let the dentist begin the process of taking an impression of the tooth so a partial can be made and soon it will be removed. The promise seemed like a taunt or proof of my unworthiness and failure. Thus, I sat here this morning feeling bad about myself.

Then, I read this paragraph and am reminded that I cannot fail. It is not possible I fail. God’s Will is done. I will find the peace in which He established me because He does not change His Mind. I asked Jesus if I was wrong about working on the idea of healing the mind of the belief in sickness and if I was wrong to expect the sickness to respond to the mind that is healed. Maybe I was listening to the ego being grandiose to think I was ready for this.

Jesus: What do you know now that you didn’t know when you started the practice?

Me: The dentist told me that the problem began with the tooth being damaged at some point. I remembered something he probably didn’t remember. When I first started seeing him, he was a new dentist. He was working on or near that tooth, and something went wrong. He had to do a lot of unexpected and painful work, and afterward, he indicated the error might have long-term effects. At the time, I felt resentful of his mistake. Now, thinking about it,  I felt resentful that this was all his fault.

I see that this was an attempt to make the problem come first and then the decision about what it means and how I feel about it. Really, the thought comes first, and then the situation is projected as an event in my life. Ah, I see that I still believe in being unfairly treated and being a victim, and from that belief, I projected a story that represents that belief.

The thought came first, then the event.

I also see that in an attempt to keep the blame from attaching to me, I used the dentist to be the guilty one. Becoming aware of projecting guilt onto the dentist, I tried to forgive him. I reminded myself that he was a new dentist and was doing the best he could. I reminded myself that I make many mistakes and I would not condemn myself, so I wouldn’t condemn him.

Pretty words, and they make sense when seen in the light of what I read in the Course, but the error was in making the offense real and then trying to forgive it. That cannot work. In truth my meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world that I am then trying to forgive. How can I forgive what I believe really happened?

Trying to do so is me experiencing level confusion.

Yes, in the world, he might have made an error, but the world comes from my mind, so I received only what I asked for, and there is no one to blame and no one to forgive. How could I have such a clear understanding of how we make the world and then find scapegoats to take the blame and still do it? And I did it so quickly and with such finesse that I didn’t even realize what I had done until now.

My next thought was, understanding the concepts so well, why is it that I still chose to play the game and pretend I had nothing to do with it? When I asked Him this, Jesus told me to read further in this section of the Manual for Teachers. (How is Healing Accomplished?) This is what I read:

What does this recognition “cost”? It costs the whole world you see, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind. For with this recognition is responsibility placed where it belongs; not with the world, but on him who looks on the world and sees it as it is not. He looks on what he chooses to see. No more and no less. The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was mistaken about what it is. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea.

Once again, the Holy Spirit is helping me.

I am learning that understanding a concept and putting it into practice are two different things. The understanding is helpful, but until I try to use it, I have no idea if I really accept it. And why is it that I would not readily accept healing? It seems to make no sense. In “The Perceived Purpose of Sickness,” Jesus explains it in this way:

“And what, in this insane conviction, does healing stand for? It symbolizes the defeat of God’s Son and the triumph of his Father over him. It represents the ultimate defiance in a direct form which the Son of God is forced to recognize. It stands for all that he would hide from himself to protect his “life.” If he is healed, he is responsible for his thoughts. And if he is responsible for his thoughts, he will be killed to prove to him how weak and pitiful he is. But if he chooses death himself, his weakness is his strength. Now has he given himself what God would give to him, and thus entirely usurped the throne of his Creator.”

It is discouraging to me that this could still be true for me.

I want to love God and feel His love for me. I cannot do this if I still believe I have something to fear from Him or that I am still competing with Him. It feels like there is still this long rocky road ahead of me that I must traverse. It makes me tired to think of it. But looking back on all this with you, Jesus, I now understand why it was important for me to do this work with the tooth.

Jesus: This understanding of the process and what occurred in your mind came easily to you once you made the decision to look at it. You understood that you simply made a series of decisions with the ego rather than with the Holy Spirit. That easy and quick understanding would not have happened even a short time ago. Your work with the Rules for Decision has made it possible for you to see more clearly and more quickly how the ego mind would mislead you.

It was not reading about the Rules for Decision that helped you get to this place of clarity.

It was practicing them that brought you here. The same thing is true of healing. Practice is required of you. Perhaps the next time you work with this idea, you will decide to save yourself some suffering by simply watching the process with detachment rather than with judgment. Doing so this time would have brought you to the same conclusion, but without the guilt, there would have been less anxiety and less upset.

Remember that all healing is just a change of mind, and you are changing your mind. This is not necessarily an extended process. The road ahead needs be neither rocky nor long. How hard is it to change your mind? How long does it take to change your mind? You get to decide that, but you are not deciding on your own. And you have much help now as you decide more and more often with the Holy Spirit. It is His function to help you, and He will not fail in His function.

All of this happened a few years ago. It helped me to understand how my own decisions cause the world as I experience it. It also showed me that each situation is valuable in my overall progress. I don’t need to think of anything I do as problematic if I remember to ask for clarity as to the lesson I am to learn from the situation.