ACIM 5. I. The Invitation to the Holy Spirit, P 5, 6, 7. The Holy Spirit is the Christ Mind which is aware of the knowledge that lies beyond perception.
I. The Invitation to the Holy Spirit, P 5
5 The Holy Spirit is the Christ Mind which is aware of the knowledge that lies beyond perception. He came into being with the separation as a protection, inspiring the Atonement principle at the same time. Before that there was no need for healing, for no one was comfortless. The Voice of the Holy Spirit is the Call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed there will be no Call to return. But what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless their creations and keep them in the light of joy.
In the very instant we needed healing, the Holy Spirit came into being. He is the Healer we need to bring the mind back to truth. Before we thought of separation, there was no need for healing, so there was no need for a Healer. I am so grateful that when a need arose, it was met. We are perfectly protected, even from our errors.
Through the thought of separation, we created an experience of pain, suffering, and death, and even though we could not make it real, we could feel as if it were real. Loneliness, confusion, guilt, and fear are the effects of this belief. If there were no Correction in place, we would be lost in our dreams, unable to remember who we are, forever trading one perception for another, sinking deeper and deeper into the hell of our nightmares.
We Are Protected
But we are protected from this fate, protected in our dreams, comforted and guided out of them by the Holy Spirit. I feel like a lost child, so to me, the Holy Spirit feels like a protective Being, but this is not actual. The Holy Spirit is the Christ Mind. He is the Call to Atonement. He is the Voice for God. Probably it would be more appropriate to think of the Holy Spirit as It rather than He, but that wouldn’t be very comforting for me. Maybe that is why the Holy Spirit is referred to as He in the Course, or more likely, the Holy Spirit is something beyond my understanding. Maybe everything is beyond my understanding at this time, so it is all a metaphor, a bridge to the truth.
What I know is that the Holy Spirit is in my mind and will correct my thinking and heal me. He will comfort me and guide me. He waits patiently for my acceptance of His help. I am always willing to look at my thoughts with the Holy Spirit and let Him purify them. And sometimes, I will ask for a certain idea to be healed, and He will direct me to those thoughts in my mind. It sounds like such a simple, straightforward process. I ask Holy Spirit to look with me, realize my thoughts are hurting me, and accept the Atonement. Easy peasy, right?
Well, yes and no.
It is a simple process, and no, it is not always easy. Remember that my mind is split. I want to be healed, even while the other part of my mind defends against this healing. That part of me wants to remain in this separated state and to continue the stories. This conflict in the mind is painful and sometimes frightening. The way I defend against the truth is to ignore it and place my attention on the stories instead. I can get lost in the stories for a while when I do this.
Recently, the Holy Spirit has been directing me to look at guilt. At first, this was pretty exciting because I was seeing guilt where I had not seen it before. This is good because looking with Holy Spirit is safe and doesn’t cause more guilt. In this way, I can see it as if it was just part of a movie as if I were removed from it. From this detached point of view, it is clear to me that it is not helping and that I don’t want it anymore.
Overcoming Confusion
But what happened is that as I looked at more and more guilt in my mind, I forgot my purpose. I forgot that I want to see the guilt, and I forgot that I am looking so that it can be healed. Instead, I got caught up in all the guilty stories and believed them. I knew I had made an error and moved off my path, but I was drawn to the guilt. Jesus says that we have a sick attraction to guilt, which is true. Soon, I completely forgot that I was looking at stories so I could forgive them. All I was aware of was the guilt I felt for all these stories.
However, my heart wanted to be healed, and that desire for healing was strong despite my confusion. I couldn’t stop feeling guilty, but I could ask for help. I was led to inspiring words coming from someone else and inspired words from my journal of an earlier time. My mind began to clear of the fog of confusion, and I opened my heart to healing. At the moment, I wanted to heal more than I wanted the guilt it was done. That is the miracle, this instantaneous healing simply because I want healing. It doesn’t come from me, nor is it a reward for good behavior. So, it is not withheld because of bad behavior. It is simply done the moment I really want it.
Healing Is Certain
We will all be healed, and our mind’s returned to truth. Perception will fall away, and knowledge will flow, once again, unimpeded throughout the mind. When this happens, the Holy Spirit as Healer will no longer be needed, but He is a creation of God, and so is eternal. Jesus tells us that He will be given another function. His function will then be to remain with Us, to bless our creations, and keep them in the light of joy. You know, every time I read something like this in the Course, something that speaks so casually of my Divinity, my heart leaps in joy. This is Who I Am, not the confused mind that thinks its salvation is guilt. I wish I would stop forgetting that.
I. The Invitation to the Holy Spirit, 6
6 God honored even the miscreations of His children because they had made them. But He also blessed His children with a way of thinking that could raise their perceptions so high they could reach almost back to Him. The Holy Spirit is the Mind of the Atonement. He represents a state of mind close enough to One-mindedness that transfer to it is at last possible. Perception is not knowledge, but it can be transferred to knowledge, or cross over into it. It might even be more helpful here to use the literal meaning of transferred or “carried over,” since the last step is taken by God.
To help us accept the Atonement, Jesus spends much of the Course describing the ego. He explains it in detail, what it is, how we recognize it, and the behavior that we can expect when we identify with the ego. He then contrasts this with life lived from a healed mind. The goal is to help us see that we don’t want to continue to live through the ego and that we do want to let it go.
A Misunderstanding of the Ego
While in this phase, I began to think of the ego as something bad and something I really needed to dump. Over time my attitude changed. I began to look at the ego differently. Instead of seeing it as a terrible mistake I made and desperately needed to undo, I saw it as an idea gone askew. I had a thought, which unfolded and was rejected. It was undone before anything could happen. As Jesus tells us: ⁶Your starting point is truth, and you must return to your Beginning. ⁷Much has been seen since then, but nothing has really happened. (ACIM, T-3.VII.5:6-7)
So, what is going on now? It sure seems like it is still playing out. Jesus helps us understand this paradox when he tells us this in Lesson 158. ⁵For we but see the journey from the point at which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we make it once again; reviewing mentally what has gone by. (ACIM, W-158.4:5) What a joke we play on ourselves! We believe we are living this life for the first time, and all along, we are only remembering it. As he tells us, ⁶You keep an ancient memory before your eyes. (ACIM, T-26.V.5:6)
A Shift in My Understanding
Because of my nature as the Son of God, the thought I had, while impossible, played out in all its detail as if it were really happening, and it seemed very realistic, like a finely crafted movie. It is a testimony to my power as God’s Son that this could happen. The error, the place it all went wrong, is that I began to take it seriously. I felt guilt and fear that I had actually done something wrong, and I hid myself from my Father within my miscreation. The idea itself, the unfolding of that idea, was not a sin. It was not inherently evil or wrong. In fact, Jesus says that God honored my miscreation simply because it was mine. This assures me I am not guilty and I have not undone reality. I am not lost, just caught in a time loop.
The shift for me is that I am letting go of the shame that was the original error. I am learning to honor my own miscreation. I don’t want to continue identifying with it as if it is myself, but I see that it is important that I understand I am not guilty of it. It is actually quite a remarkable feat. I have made something impossible and made it so well that I got lost in it.
I Am Unlimited
God would never limit me in any way because limitation is not part of His nature. But in His love for me, He placed in my mind a way out of this miscreation. He brought into being the Holy Spirit, the memory of God and His Voice that speaks to me all through the day. It is His function to direct me out of the illusion and back to my real life when I am ready. So, the Holy Spirit is helping me to see the ego thinking in my mind, recognize it as something I am no longer interested in and allow it to be undone for me.
I choose to let go of the ego self not because it is a sin but because I am through with it. The only way to have my illusion was to substitute perception for knowledge, so now the Holy Spirit is inspiring my perceptions so that they are very near knowledge, near enough that Knowledge Itself can flow into my mind. Perception will be transferred into knowledge, or as Jesus refers to it, God will take the final step and lift me up to Him.
I. The Invitation to the Holy Spirit, P 7
7 The Holy Spirit, the shared Inspiration of all the Sonship, induces a kind of perception in which many elements are like those in the Kingdom of Heaven itself:
First, its universality is perfectly clear, and no one who attains it could believe for one instant that sharing it involves anything but gain.
Second, it is incapable of attack and is therefore truly open. This means that although it does not engender knowledge, it does not obstruct it in any way.
Finally, it points the way beyond the healing that it brings, and leads the mind beyond its own integration toward the paths of creation. It is at this point that sufficient quantitative change occurs to produce a real qualitative shift.
The Holy Spirit corrects my perception so that it is as close to knowledge as we can get here, and my perception becomes universal. I notice that I am slowly letting go of the idea of specialness and am beginning to see everyone as the same. I remember a few years ago being freaked out as I sat on the bridge waiting for a wreck to be cleared. This is an older bridge and is considered by many not to be safe. In the opposite lane, traffic continued slowly, and lots of big trucks went by, making the bridge shake.
What About the Others?
I was nervous about being stuck on this bridge, and when the traffic started moving, I felt tense as I neared the top and relieved as I got closer to the bottom. Suddenly I thought, “What about all the people behind me? Would a failed bridge be disastrous only if I were on it, or more disastrous if I was on it?” It was one of the first moments of perceiving more universally, or rather of glimpsing a more universal way of perceiving.
It happened other times after that. For instance, I would hear a siren at night and automatically take roll call for my children. Where were they? Could the siren be for them? And then feeling relief and disinterest as I realized my kids were all safe at home. And one day, when this was happening, I thought that everyone is some mother’s child, and I understood that there was a way of perceiving that is not special. I still sometimes count my children when I hear a siren, but the Holy Spirit is beginning to make some headway with me as I let go of the idea of specialness.
Expanding Circle of Love
I began by caring most for “me,” this body of Myron. My care expanded to include my family, then a husband, and when children came along, my care centered on them above all others. What has happened as my mind heals is that my care is less discriminating. When someone I have not met comes into my awareness, I can care as deeply for that person as for someone I feel close to. This is not complete for me, but as my perception is corrected, my care grows to encompass all, and it is beginning to feel strange to think of anyone as more special than another.
I know now that love cannot be diluted through giving it. I cannot give love away in the sense of not having it, as would happen if I gave away a thing. My care does not lose value because it extends to everyone in my awareness. I don’t love my children less because I love your children.
In the past, I must have thought there is only so much safety and love to go around. So, if there was danger, I had to direct my hopes and wishes toward those close to me. And to do less would leave them vulnerable to attack. For that reason, I couldn’t afford to care about someone else’s child, or at least not about everyone’s child. This seems so weird to me now it makes me wonder if I really did think that way.
Removing the Blocks
Is my perception now truly open and incapable of attack? No, but it is closer to that. Yes, I am still capable of attack. I attack myself when I feel guilty and others when I assign guilt. I cannot be open if I am defensive. But I am so much more open than I used to be and attack less. When I do attack, I see my error and ask for correction. And now that I can imagine it, I look forward to the day when I am truly incapable of attack.
Since I can now imagine that happening, it is exciting for me to think about it. I am motivated to let go of the belief in specialness. Now when I have an attack thought, I remember that I cannot attack my brother and enter God’s presence. This further motivates me to allow my perception to be corrected. One way I remove the blocks to love’s presence is to stop attacking and defending.
⁶The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. ⁷It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. (ACIM, T-in.1:6-7)
Shifting from I and Me to Us
As I allow my mind to be healed in many little ways, I begin to experience a different life. I am happier and more peaceful. At first, it was slow going as I became convinced that it was ok to give up the old way of thinking, and then I realized it was more than ok, it was actually to my advantage. Eventually, what has happened is that I care less about what is to “my” advantage, and instead, I think in terms of the Sonship. It is no longer about me; it is about us. I ask myself, is this going to advance us or hinder us? Will it help awaken the Sonship or add to our illusion? When that happened, I realized I had made a significant shift in my perception.
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