ACIM Chapter 13. XI. The Peace of Heaven, 6, 7

ACIM Chapter 13. XI. The Peace of Heaven, 6, 7

XI. The Peace of Heaven, P 6

6 You will not remember change and shift in Heaven. You have need of contrast only here. Contrast and differences are necessary teaching aids, for by them you learn what to avoid and what to seek. When you have learned this, you will find the answer that makes the need for any differences disappear. Truth comes of its own will unto its own. When you have learned that you belong to truth, it will flow lightly over you without a difference of any kind. For you will need no contrast to help you realize that this is what you want, and only this. Fear not the Holy Spirit will fail in what your Father has given Him to do. The Will of God can fail in nothing.

We will not experience contrast in Heaven. Funny, but I noticed a thought of resistance to this. It was something like, “Will I miss choices? Will I miss the feelings that occur with contrast and differences?” Then I thought about standing in Walmart, looking at the many different kinds of toothpaste, and trying to choose the one I wanted. I narrowed it down to a single brand name, but even then, there were a lot of choices.

Each different tube promised to do something specific for me. I wondered which one I needed the most: enamel protection, whitening, repair and strengthening, help with my bad breath, deep cleaning, and on and on. So, to make a choice, I read the ingredients on each one and discovered they were all pretty much the same. I also realized that when I was younger, I took great pride in finding the “right” everything. It made me feel successful and in charge. Now, it just makes me tired.

So, what is the toothpaste example all about?

Well, this is how it feels to me here in the world now. This is why I won’t miss the contrasts, the differences. First, they are all the same, really, new packaging, new ways of saying the same thing, but really, all the same.  I have a worry, a fear, a guilty feeling, and the ego offers me an array of choices. Which one do I need today? I was a bad mom, and now I need to make up for it. I may not have enough money, so I must find a way to earn more. What will happen with our country now that things have changed so much, and I can’t find a package with a solution for that. Ha ha.

The thing is, the ego offers the same solution with different words and promises, and in the end, nothing does much except to make the problems look different, if even that. The Holy Spirit, however, shows me that all the problems are the same and that the package they come in is irrelevant. He offers me a solution that works for them all. No worrying or fretting over which to choose. Just accept His solution and move on.

If I don’t choose the Holy Spirit’s easy solution, I focus on the problem in its current form.

I ponder one ego solution and then another. Eventually, I discovered what became obvious to me at the toothpaste aisle: all the solutions, while sounding good, have the same ingredients. What I discovered through the school of hard knocks that the ego puts me through is that its solutions are pretty ineffective.

I have tried one ego solution after another, but what has it accomplished? The best I can say for it is that the contrast between the ego’s solution and the Holy Spirit’s solution has helped me choose the Holy Spirit more and more often. I used to revel in making those choices for the same reason I thought it was a reflection of my self-worth that I would, through careful study, choose the best toothpaste. Now, I am just bored with the whole thing, choosing the right toothpaste and choosing the right solution to life’s problems.

Sometimes, I can still get discouraged because I seem to go back to listening to my ego even though I think I have learned my lesson. I start to doubt that this is going to work. But Jesus keeps me on track. He repeatedly reminds me that I cannot fail because God’s Will is my will, and God cannot fail, so I cannot fail. I suspect I have unseen help, angels, and masters who stand behind me, before me, and around me, uplifting and supporting as the need may be. This complete thought reversal the Course has given me, and the Holy Spirit is accomplishing in me, would be more than I could do alone.

XI. The Peace of Heaven, P 7

7 Have faith in only this one thing, and it will be sufficient: God wills you be in Heaven, and nothing can keep you from it, or it from you. Your wildest misperceptions, your weird imaginings, your blackest nightmares all mean nothing. They will not prevail against the peace God wills for you. The Holy Spirit will restore your sanity because insanity is not the Will of God. If that suffices Him, it is enough for you. You will not keep what God would have removed, because it breaks communication with you with whom He would communicate. His Voice will be heard.

Wow! Could Jesus be any clearer? This awakening that we are moving toward, this is going to happen. We cannot fail, and this is a hard fact. I know that it doesn’t always seem so. The mind seems to be in control of me sometimes, rather than the other way around. Life seems to be happening to me rather than by me. And it seems the harder I try, the less I succeed. But as I continue to do the work regardless of appearances, things start to shift, and I notice a forward motion once again. But honestly, I appreciate this paragraph very much. I am printing this out and keeping it with me for those moments of discouragement.

Lesson 16 is another one of those times when Jesus is very clear.

He tells us that we have no neutral thoughts, and he makes it clear that our thoughts are making the world we see. Every thought contributes to the world, every one of them! I love the way Carol Howe expressed it in her video of the lesson. She said that unspeakable power is passing through the matrix of thoughts I am engaged in, and the world as I experience it shows up. I can’t be careless about where I put my attention. I am quite literally making the world with these thoughts.

This is relevant now because it bears on today’s Text passage. Why is it that we need this strong reminder of the inevitable return to God? It is because we have used the power of our thinking to make a world that implies the opposite. Our careless thoughts are making a world that seems to prove we are sinners, that we are helpless victims, and that we are fools to hope for the peace of God. With what we think of as idle thoughts, we have made a world where there is unkindness and even cruelty every day, everywhere. This is a world of lack and loss, of pain and sickness, of suffering of every kind. Who can hold out hope in the face of this?

And yet, Jesus tells us this in Lesson 16.

The idea for today is a beginning step in dispelling the belief that your thoughts have no effect. Everything you see is the result of your thoughts. There is no exception to this fact. Thoughts are not big or little; powerful or weak. They are merely true or false. Those that are true create their own likeness. Those that are false make theirs.

So if my world seems impossibly cruel and if I seem to suffer even unto death, it can only be because I made it so. The same unspeakable power that made this mockery of “life” can create from love, joy, and peace. What a different world I will see as I change my mind. What a different world I do see as I change my mind. I know this because I have experienced that change as I practice what Jesus tells me in his Course.

I think about my last year at work, and at the relationships that were healed.

The world I made at that workplace was one of strife and of constant conflict. I had reached the point of dreading to show up on Mondays. It stayed that way and got worse because I chose to tell myself that my distress was caused by the workplace and the people in it. I had all the proof. All I had to do was look around and see the unpleasant people and the misery they caused.

Then, when I decided that enough was enough and that there had to be a better way, I surrendered my thoughts to the Holy Spirit, and I allowed Him to purify them. The relationships began to heal, and the situation changed completely. By the time I left, I was in perfect peace with that company and in love with the people who worked there. They treated me with respect and kindness.

What changed was me.

I had been joining with the ego in how I chose to think; therefore, what I saw was a reflection of separation. It was stressful, and it was suffering. When I changed my mind, I joined with the Holy Spirit, and my thinking changed. My new thoughts were more in line with the thoughts of God. They were infused with kindness and love. When that happened, the world I experienced changed. It was a kind and loving world. It was a perfect example of what Lesson 16 is telling us.

There was a time when I used the workplace to prove that I might never return to God, that I was hopelessly entangled with a world over which I had no control. But Jesus is right, God wills I be in Heaven, and nothing can keep me from it, or it from me. Eventually, I will reach my endurance limit. I will decide that I want out of my darkly wild and imaginative world. Right now, I feel a longing so intense that it makes me cry to think of it. I long for God. What I know is that I made the world that seems to separate me from God, and the same power that made the world will undo this insane thing I have done. I watch my thoughts now with a vigilance born, not of desperation, but of certainty. Thank you for that, Jesus.

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