ACIM Chapter 5. I. The Invitation to the Holy Spirit, P 1, 2

ACIM 5. I. The Invitation to the Holy Spirit, P 1, 2. Healing is a thought by which two minds perceive their oneness and become glad.

I. The Invitation to the Holy Spirit

1 Healing is a thought by which two minds perceive their oneness and become glad. This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them, and lets God go out into them and through them. Only the healed mind can experience revelation with lasting effect, because revelation is an experience of pure joy. If you do not choose to be wholly joyous, your mind cannot have what it does not choose to be. Remember that spirit knows no difference between having and being. The higher mind thinks according to the laws spirit obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God. To spirit getting is meaningless and giving is all. Having everything, spirit holds everything by giving it, and thus creates as the Father created. While this kind of thinking is totally alien to having things, even to the lower mind it is quite comprehensible in connection with ideas. If you share a physical possession, you do divide its ownership. If you share an idea, however, you do not lessen it. All of it is still yours although all of it has been given away. Further, if the one to whom you give it accepts it as his, he reinforces it in your mind and thus increases it. If you can accept the concept that the world is one of ideas, the whole belief in the false association the ego makes between giving and losing is gone.

Healing is a thought by which two minds perceive their oneness and become glad.

I see more than one idea in this paragraph that speaks to me. First is the recurring idea that it is in joining that we wake up. Jesus tells us later in the Text that we cannot enter God’s presence if we attack His Son. This is true of the brother standing next to us and ourselves. He tells us in another place that every encounter with a brother has the potential to be holy. He says that separation is the problem and joining is the solution. Over and over, he tells us that our happiness, our peace, and our return to God is dependent on joining with our brother and in making no exceptions to this. No one is to be left out. No one is to stand outside forgiveness in our minds.  

As he often does in the Course, Jesus is telling us that joining is the same as healing and that joining is how we allow God to flow between us, and joining is how we experience joy. He also says that joining is how we experience lasting revelation since joining equals joy, and revelation is an experience of pure joy. This really makes me want to be aware of those times when I am judging someone so that I can choose again. Judgment separates and so takes me to the other end of the spectrum from where I want to be.      

Remember that spirit knows no difference between having and being.

It took me a long time to understand this relationship. Now it seems obvious to me. I have joy because I am joy. I have love because I am love. And I have peace because I am peace. I am those ideas because I am what God created. I am more of God, so to speak, and He is joy and love and peace. Thus, I can freely give joy and love and peace because, being ideas, they are not lost in the giving. In fact, in their acceptance, they increase.    

If you share a physical possession, you do divide its ownership. If you share an idea, however, you do not lessen it.

Jesus points out that we think giving and receiving are different because we think in terms of form. When someone needs money, if I have it, I will give it. Here is how I used to do it. I would see how much they need and then look into my bank account to see how much of that I can afford to give. This is the way we generally give.  

As my mind heals and I get a grip on the metaphysics of the Course, I begin to understand that everything is just an idea. The money in my bank account is just an idea in my mind that has been projected outward so I can see what it looks like and experience it differently. The money, the bank, my body, everything is just an idea. If that understanding were complete, how would that change how I give?  

Giving Ideas is Different than Giving Things

You can’t really give away an idea in the way you give away your money. If I give you my money, it isn’t there anymore. But if I give you an idea, I still have the idea. If you accept the idea that I give as true, that idea is stronger in my mind as well. So, in giving the idea to you, I not only didn’t lose the idea, I actually gained in the giving. Now let me relate that to giving away money. If I understand that money is just a projection of an idea, then I could give away money with impunity, knowing that I can’t give away the source of the money. The source of the money, the idea, remains in my mind, where it continues to be projected.

So, let’s say I believe that everything is an idea because it says so in the Course. But I am still afraid to put it to the test because what if there is a catch someplace? What if I have to do something to make this my experience, and I don’t know what that is? What if I believe it, yet doubt it? That is a familiar experience for me. Nearly everything I have learned from the Course started out as a possibility, not a certainty. I practiced what I learned until it became a certainty.  

So here I am in that in-between place.

I believe everything is an idea except when I don’t. What do I do about giving? And how do I get all the way from the belief in loss to the thought that getting is meaningless and giving is all? Someone needs money. I open my checkbook to see how much money I can afford to give. I write a check for what seems right to me. Since I really want a healed mind, as I do this, I ask Holy Spirit to heal my mind of the belief in lack and loss.  

I do this until one day, I realize that I didn’t check my bank account first. Instead, I just asked Spirit what he would have me do, and if I felt the prompt to give, I asked how much. I have shifted a bit through the desire and willingness to heal. There is more belief in my mind that giving is not loss because everything, including money, is an idea, and you cannot diminish an idea by giving it away.  

I. The Invitation to the Holy Spirit, P 2

2 Let us start our process of reawakening with just a few simple concepts: Thoughts increase by being given away. The more who believe in them the stronger they become. Everything is an idea. How, then, can giving and losing be associated? 

Thoughts increase by being given away. I feel very strongly about watching my thoughts and noticing the ones I am giving away. When someone says something negative today, complaining about the weather, expressing fear of political changes, worrying about their job, or any of the many other ways we express the belief in lack and loss, the belief in pain, suffering, and death, what will I say in return? I have heard myself join right in with my complaints and fears, and I don’t want to do that anymore.  

I don’t want ever to do that again.

And the way to stop doing it is to notice when I do and ask that my mind be healed of these beliefs. I have tried swallowing the words in the past, which is not the solution. My beliefs will find a way to surface despite my efforts to hide them. And whether I actually voice wrong-minded beliefs or not, they still affect the Sonship. I choose healing today. I don’t want to be the complainer or the fear-monger. My choice is to have a grateful heart and a thankful mind. I want to increase love, not fear.  

Everything is an idea. We have already talked about that, but it is good to look at it again because it is a different way to think. Before A Course in Miracles, I didn’t think of a couch as an idea. I thought of an idea as potential. It was the first step in making something. A Course in Miracles has turned my understanding upside down. I don’t have a clear understanding of the way things are, but I understand enough to know how ignorant I was before.  

Jesus doesn’t say that everything starts with an idea.

He says everything is an idea. The ego begins with a thought and then looks for a way to make something that represents that thought. I wonder how many patents there are for things we have made. I think that making things is a distortion of creation. It is a way of convincing us that our mind is powerless.  

We are smart enough to think of ways to make things happen within a very limited scope, but there is too much fear to accept our true power. As egos, we accept that we are clever, but we fear that to think we are powerful is to invite the wrath of God. Playing small is how we hope to convince God that we are not worth His concern, to allow him to forget that we, in a long-ago moment of madness, usurped His power and became our own creators. So, we pretend that if we want a new and better mouse trap, we must invent one. It’s all part of the game we play, the game of being human.  

We have done such a good job of hiding out in the world.

Our pretense of being small and insignificant has caused us to forget who we truly are. We have forgotten our Divinity and all that means. Jesus remembered, and he is helping us, as we are ready, to decide to remember. He says that we can start with a couple of simple concepts. Thoughts increase by being given away, and everything is a thought. Give freely what you want to see increased, what you want to grow stronger in your mind. Give freely because the more you give it, the more you have it. There is no loss in giving, only increase, so give freely.  

Today I am going to give what I want; I will give love and kindness. There are thoughts in my mind to be healed. I will ask for healing of the need to be right, the need to be first or greater, the need to hide or be smaller, and the need to be special. I will ask that my mind be healed of the belief in pain, suffering, and death in whatever forms they may take. Instead, I will give (believe in, think about, express) only what I want to retain and what I want to increase.  

I am as God created me.

So are you. I am fearless. What does the eternal have to fear? I am innocent because I was created by Innocence, and so I remain. We all were, and we all are that. I am safe, and nothing to the contrary could possibly be true. I am worthy because my worth was established by God in my creation. And what is true about me is true about all the Sons of God. These are the ideas I will believe in and increase through my willingness to share them.  

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