ACIM The Atonement as Defense, P 1, 2. 1 You can do anything I ask. 2 True denial is a powerful protective device.
ACIM II. The Atonement as Defense, P 1, 2
II. The Atonement as Defense, P 1
1 You can do anything I ask. I have asked you to perform miracles, and have made it clear that miracles are natural, corrective, healing and universal. There is nothing they cannot do, but they cannot be performed in the spirit of doubt or fear. When you are afraid of anything, you are acknowledging its power to hurt you. Remember that where your heart is, there is your treasure also. You believe in what you value. If you are afraid, you are valuing wrongly. Your understanding will then inevitably value wrongly, and by endowing all thoughts with equal power will inevitably destroy peace. That is why the Bible speaks of “the peace of God which passeth understanding.” This peace is totally incapable of being shaken by errors of any kind. It denies the ability of anything not of God to affect you. This is the proper use of denial. It is not used to hide anything, but to correct error. It brings all error into the light, and since error and darkness are the same, it corrects error automatically.
Doubt and Fear Block Miracles
The first sentence in this paragraph sends chills down my spine. I can do anything Jesus asks of me. That statement is unequivocal. Jesus has said that I can perform miracles, and he has made it clear that they are important. This is a statement that I don’t want to forget. I will remind myself of this as we go along in this study.
When Jesus says miracles cannot be performed in doubt or fear, I understand the reason that sometimes it seems I cannot perform them. When I see that physical healing is needed and I wonder if I am supposed to do this, or if I just cannot believe that this can be healed, at least by me, this blocks the healing.
I Bought a House
One day, I got the chance to witness what happens when fear is removed. I had bought a house, and work was being done on it. There was a setback when the roofing materials were stolen. I had to buy them all over again, which was a significant cost. I didn’t go into fear about this, and I trusted that all would work out exactly as it should.
Since I was not fearful, my mind was clear when it came to the thieves. I did not feel angry or resentful of them, and instead, I realized how painful it must be to live with such fear of lack that you think your survival depends on taking what others have. I prayed for their healing as I prayed that my mind be healed of any such beliefs. Their healing is my healing because healing spreads throughout the mind. If I were fearful about the loss myself, fear would block love, and defensiveness would make the belief in separation stronger.
I Ran Short of Money
Once that was taken care of, I realized I was out of money and I still had a lot to be done. When I saw the numbers, I felt a moment of panic. Not only was I short of money to finish the project, but also, I didn’t have enough money to pay for what was done already. Despite the panicky feeling, I also felt that current of truth that flows unchanged and unimpeded by ego. I knew that the panic was not the true thought in my mind, and when I asked for help, the Holy Spirit reminded me that there were other thoughts in the mind that I could look at.
So, I turned my attention to those thoughts. I remembered that this script is written, and my job is to see it with Christ’s Vision. The only purpose of the story is to show me where there is still a need to heal my mind. Other true thoughts were there, and the panic quickly faded away. I wanted to know how to use this situation to heal my mind. I also needed to know how to deal with it in the story.
Money Began to Flow
As I sat there in peace, I remembered that I had some money in a vacation account that I could use. Then I remembered another way I could get some money. During the day, money began to flow into my life in the most unexpected and remarkable ways. I didn’t do anything to create most of this flow; it just came into my life. I didn’t know if it would be enough, but I trusted that flow. Why should it stop before the project is complete?
One of the things I was to learn from this situation is that fear blocks the flow of love, and removing fear allows it to move into my life in whatever way I think I need it. In this situation, the most helpful way for love to show up was as money, which is what happened. I used the money to finish the project because that is what was needed in this story of Myron’s life. But what I felt was love washing over me just because I allowed it. It was an incredible feeling.
2 II. The Atonement as Defense, P 2
2 True denial is a powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you. This kind of denial is not a concealment but a correction. Your right mind depends on it. Denial of error is a strong defense of truth, but denial of truth results in miscreation, the projections of the ego. In the service of the right mind the denial of error frees the mind, and re-establishes the freedom of the will. When the will is really free it cannot miscreate, because it recognizes only truth.
I used to be in denial about a lot of stuff. When I did something regrettable, I would push away the guilt I felt. I would push it out of my conscious awareness, or I would push it onto someone else, making it seem, on the surface, to be her or his fault. I might push it onto the circumstance, convincing myself what I did was unavoidable considering what happened, or maybe considering how I was raised or things that happened to me in the past.
Guilt Is the Reason for Denial
Of course, this doesn’t work. Whatever I push away or down is still there. Guilt experienced out of my awareness is still guilt. Guilt given away is still with me because what I give is now more mine than before. In fact, it is made worse because now I have guilt for the original idea and guilt for trying to foist it on someone else, and I have reinforced the belief in guilt.
Regardless of how I choose to experience guilt, it is destructive. Judgment, which always comes before guilt, is the building block of the illusion, and guilt, which always follows judgment, is the glue that holds the illusion in place. The illusion is the place I hide my guilt from God, and returning to God is my goal, so this kind of denial is counterproductive.
A Useful Form of Denial
There is, however, a useful form of denial. When I notice that I feel guilty or fearful, angry, jealous, sad, uncertain or doubtful, anything but joyous, I can deny this. I don’t deny I feel it. In fact, I allow the feeling, sitting in it for a moment, looking at it with the Holy Spirit. What I deny is that the feeling has a true cause. As I deny the authenticity of the feeling, I ask that my mind be healed of the false belief that triggered this feeling.
I was having some lower back and leg pain one day, and I noticed that my mind was thinking of the reasons for this pain. There was a whole list. I overdid shopping, cooking, cleaning, and entertaining. I need to turn my mattress. This happens periodically, meaning it is time to see a chiropractor. I shouldn’t have lifted that heavy box. These ideas are the wrong use of denial. So, then I used denial correctly and denied that any of these things cause physical pain.
These things are just where I project the cause using one or more of them to blame for my pain, which used to work for me. Or at least it seemed to. In this way, I was trying to convince myself I was not responsible for what happened to me. I was a victim of circumstances or people who demanded too much of me. The problem is, this does not really work, but only seems to for a while.
How to Use Denial Properly
The truth is in my mind, though I deny it and pretend I don’t know that I do this to myself. Because it is in my mind, I am left with a sense of anxiety that I don’t consciously identify, but that is discomforting. If I don’t allow myself to become fully aware, I have no way to correct the problem.
That day, what I did instead was to deny the mind’s projections. I know that nothing is outside my mind. This body is not outside my mind. The idea of pain is not outside my mind. The body is an image, and the pain is a concept, and all of it was of my own design. I am fully responsible for the belief in the body and in pain, and I accept that responsibility without guilt. Now that I am fully aware, I can ask the Holy Spirit to undo what I have done.
I Remember What Jesus Says
This is applicable to financial problems, relationship problems, or anything else that I have previously used as a way to express the hidden, unconscious guilt that is in my mind. It is so simple that I can hardly believe it has taken this long to accept the truth. Jesus says in simple and easy-to-understand words that there is nothing outside my mind.
He says that the world I see is an illusion. Jesus says that I but do this to myself. He says that I am not a body. And he reminds me that the Holy Spirit in my mind can easily undo all of these beliefs when I am ready and asks me to allow this healing. He says I can do anything he asks of me. This is all just an error, and he says that I can deny any belief that error can hurt me. This is what I choose to do now as I bring the error into the light. Since error and darkness are the same, it corrects errors automatically.
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