ACIM Chapter 14. IV. P 4 Your Function in the Atonement
Photo by John Gardiner of Whangarei, New Zealand
IV. Your Function in the Atonement P 4
4. You need not understand creation to do what must be done before that knowledge would be meaningful to you. ²God breaks no barriers; neither did He make them. ³When you release them they are gone. ⁴God will not fail, nor ever has in anything. ⁵Decide that God is right and you are wrong about yourself. ⁶He created you out of Himself, but still within Him. ⁷He knows what you are. ⁸Remember that there is no second to Him. ⁹There cannot, therefore, be anyone without His Holiness, nor anyone unworthy of His perfect Love. ¹⁰Fail not in your function of loving in a loveless place made out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deceit undone. ¹¹Fail not yourself, but instead offer to God and you His blameless Son. ¹²For this small gift of appreciation for His Love, God will Himself exchange your gift for His. (ACIM, T-14.IV.4:1-12)
First, what this paragraph is not asking of us.
I find it very reassuring that Jesus begins this paragraph by telling us that I don’t have to understand creation to do what I need to do. Nor do I have to understand God or even my Self. I spent a lot of time analyzing and discussing what reality is and what the Course means when it says this or that. At some point in my study, I shifted my focus to what I am to do rather than what I am to know. That was where my attention needed to be, and it paid off. Sometimes, of course, I become intrigued with possibilities, but my primary attention is on practice.
The real barrier being addressed
I think that I know myself better than God does. That’s insane, right? He created me. I exist within Him. Thus, I have not changed myself even though I had the thought to do so. This ‘life’ I seem to be living is just the out picturing of the desire to create myself. Since this is not possible, I am not guilty of anything. I must remain innocent because I was created innocent. All suffering comes from the belief that I am no longer as God created me. I have never been so glad to discover that I was wrong! This admission is all that is needed to bring me back to peace.
I don’t yet remain in perfect peace because I lose my way at times, as I did this morning when I woke up out of sorts. I know the signs so I can act on them quickly. If I feel guilty or afraid, judgmental, or angry, I know that I need to be redirected. I turn to the Holy Spirit again, asking Him to decide for me. In that way, I remember that God is right about me, so I must be wrong, and peace returns.
God breaks no barriers.
My practice is dedicated to releasing the barriers to Love’s presence. God will not break them down. This is my part to do. For instance, this morning I woke up out of sorts as sometimes happens. My mind was busy building barriers. I began to notice judgmental thoughts about people and situations. Just a stream of unrelated thoughts that were in line with this moodiness I was experiencing. So I asked the Holy Spirit to decide for me, and it was done. The mood fell away, and I found the whole experience pretty funny. Making this correction a habit, I am finding barriers crumbling before me. I only had to release them to be free of them. They are not healed, not transformed, they are gone.
Why deciding God is right undoes guilt
Because God created us out of Himself, but still within Him, there is no one who is separate from Him, no one less than, or outside Him. There is no outside for anyone to be in. Here is how this shows up for me in my life. Sometimes I think I don’t approve of someone. How could that be? Everyone is part of God, and in God. To disapprove of someone is to disapprove of God. It makes no sense. Sometimes I have thought that someone is so guilty that I want to amputate him from the One Self. But that cannot happen because there is no one without His Holiness, nor anyone not worthy of His perfect Love. This is just a fact, a truth. I must have made a mistake, and I am not going to argue with God about this one anymore. So, no guilt.
The only reason I ever thought that someone was unworthy is that I was looking at the illusory image and projecting something from my own mind onto that image. It was just a mistaken belief and meaningless. My ego looked at their ego and saw the unworthiness it believes about itself. It appeared in a form different from the way it shows up in me, so I didn’t at first recognize it as a reflection of my beliefs about myself. Yet it must be because mind looks for itself. But while I might be temporarily confused by this subterfuge, I can’t be fooled long. I don’t try to rehabilitate the thought, I just let it go. There. Innocence rediscovered. Love meeting itself.
My function
Every once in a while I’ll be reading the news and lose my mind. When I find it again, I wipe the muck off it and offer it to the Holy Spirit for correction. Then it’s good as new. Now I can continue to be of service to the Sonship. I can love in a loveless place. This doesn’t make me a hero, though sometimes I feel like it does when I am fighting myself, trying to get to the light. But once my mind is clear again, I see that I am the light, and so I am just doing what light does. Thus darkness and deceit are undone. You’re welcome. ~smile~
The “small gift” you are asked to give
Fail not yourself, but instead offer to God and you His blameless Son.
When I say to the Holy Spirit, decide for me, I am relinquishing the ego’s control, and this is my offering to God and to me, His blameless Son. When I am tempted to judge a brother and feel justified in doing so, I am failing myself. But when I instead turn to the Holy Spirit to decide for me, I am offering to God and myself His blameless Son. When I have stopped arguing with God as to the nature of His creation and accepted that I am and everyone else is, His blameless Son, I receive His gifts.
For this small gift of appreciation for His Love, God will Himself exchange your gift for His.
I give God my willingness, appreciation, and non-resistance. He gives me knowledge and reality. He gives me Himself.
I will happily admit that I don’t know my own best interest and will let the One who knows decide for me.
Here is something I had not thought of before, something I didn’t even realize I was doing until this lesson. I will stop insisting that my story about myself is more reliable than God’s knowledge of me.