ACIM VI. Fear and Conflict, P 6. It is possible to reach a state in which you bring your mind under my guidance without conscious effort, but this implies a willingness that you have not developed as yet.
ACIM VI. Fear and Conflict, P 6
VI. Fear and Conflict, P 6
6 It is possible to reach a state in which you bring your mind under my guidance without conscious effort, but this implies a willingness that you have not developed as yet. The Holy Spirit cannot ask more than you are willing to do. The strength to do comes from your undivided decision. There is no strain in doing God’s Will as soon as you recognize that it is also your own. The lesson here is quite simple, but particularly apt to be overlooked. I will therefore repeat it, urging you to listen. Only your mind can produce fear. It does so whenever it is conflicted in what it wants, producing inevitable strain because wanting and doing are discordant. This can be corrected only by accepting a unified goal.
When I have been in fear (which for most of my life was a familiar feeling), it has felt very real and beyond my control. It seemed to be caused by something outside me, and it seemed that unless I could control the thing that caused the fear, I was in danger. For instance, being afraid of heights, the solution is to stay on flat ground.
The Problem With Planning
If I was afraid of relationships, then I must avoid them or at least put up a wall between the other person and me so that I would not get too close. If I was afraid of poverty, I must find a good job, work very hard, and impress my boss so he would value me, and I would never be fired.
There is a problem with all this careful planning of life. It seems that it is impossible to control life, and just as I get a handle on one issue, another blows up in my face. It seemed that avoiding heights would be easy since I live in a really flat state. But then I get the best job I had ever had, and it turns out to be constructing a very high building. I wind up many feet above the ground walking on rebar, so I see all the way down between feet. And I make too much money to quit. This is typical of the ego world, with desire and fear colliding and leaving me with no “safe” choice.
All of life is like this, protecting and defending only to be undone by my very efforts, and the sense of failure just intensifies the fear. There are too many goals, and they often contradict each other. It feels like nothing ever gets done, that I run around in the same fruitless circle all my life, constantly trying to build my walls and control the uncontrollable. The best I could achieve was a temporary success, and even then, there was the fear that, inevitably, my house of cards would come tumbling down.
One Goal
One of the most important things I have learned as a student of the Course is that I have one goal, one purpose in life. My goal is to return my mind to God. I begin by acknowledging my oneness with my brother. This makes it possible to accept my place in the Sonship. My shortcut to saying all this is, “My goal is to awaken.” I want to stop dreaming and start living. I want to awaken from this dream of separation.
Having one unified goal, it becomes simple to make decisions. Do I want to earn more money? Is that my goal? Or do I want to wake up? It does not mean I cannot earn more money and wake up, but it does mean that I cannot have two goals and expect to be at peace. I cannot have two goals and still have a unified goal.
Making more money will not wake me up, so my goal remains that I want to awaken. I leave the care and support of the body to the Holy Spirit, Who knows what to do with it, and I give my mind to Him to heal. I still do things with and for the body, but it is just what must be done. And what I do with it is not my purpose.
When I Think Money Is My Goal
The only time I feel afraid about money is when I forget my single purpose and take on another purpose. And sometimes I do that. An example is when the work on my new house was almost finished, and I looked at the bill for this work, I felt panicked. It was much higher than I ever expected. I started going through my bank accounts and listing all my other bills and obligations and the more I did it, the more fearful I became.
I started out with the goal of seeing how to fit the cost of remodeling and repairing the house into my budget. Then there was the goal of planning for future work on it so I needed to save for that. Then I remembered that I will have to buy a new car in one or two years at most and maybe any day now since my present car has so many miles on it. So, I have to save for that, too.
Then the ego reminded me of all the possible problems that require a monetary solution that could come up in the future, health problems, for example. Even with careful planning, I cannot foresee what might be required to remain solvent. No wonder I felt fearful. My goal had become to control the uncontrollable.
Conflicting Goals
And in that goal, I had many other goals, some of them conflicting with the others. The idea of restricting my spending to the degree that would be necessary to meet some of these goals was disheartening. I was very conflicted as I wanted to meet one goal but didn’t want to give up another goal to do so. I don’t understand how I used to live like this all the time. It is awful.
Fortunately, I remembered that I have only one purpose here. It is not to remain financially solvent; it is to awaken. The ego screams at me to be sensible. It says I cannot just go all metaphysical on this and that I need a concrete plan and contingencies. But I have had years of practice watching my mind for ego thoughts and bringing them to the Holy Spirit for healing. I know what to do with these thoughts, and I know that my one unified goal is to awaken from this dream.
I asked the Holy Spirit what He would have me do now and followed His guidance in trust. Would I lose this home I just bought because I spent too much money on the repairs? I didn’t know. That was not my business. My one unified purpose is to wake up. I do that by using everything in my life as a classroom and by making the Holy Spirit my only Teacher. I returned to peace because I had one goal. Now I am still doing what I am guided to do as I listen to that one Teacher, and as my mind remains unconflicted, there is no fear in doing so.
Guidance Without Conscious Effort
There is a part that is not yet complete. I am told that it is possible for me to “reach a state in which you bring your mind under my guidance without conscious effort….” I still have ego thoughts that attract me. On the other hand, I notice those thoughts and I release them to the Holy Spirit as quickly as I can. Once consistent peace has been achieved, it is painful to lose it. So, my motivation to return to peace is strong.
I have a friend who is making a mistake that will cause her suffering. I can see her doing it, and I want to convince her to stop, but she doesn’t want my help. And I notice myself starting to worry about it. The worry turns into resentment that she won’t correct this before it is too late. The resentment is that it feels like she is the reason I am in fear.
Then I have to laugh because isn’t this what I am doing? I know that making saving her my goal, or my need for her to save herself as a goal, is my error. If it’s so easy to self-correct, maybe I should do it myself. After all, judging her and the situation prevents me from being at peace, and it takes effort to bring my mind back under His guidance. Oh well, each time I notice this kind of thinking and change my mind, I am closer to choosing one goal and doing so without effort.
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