ACIM Chapter 5. III. The Guide to Salvation, P 8, 9

ACIM 5. III. The Guide to Salvation, P 8, 9. You cannot understand yourself alone.

III. The Guide to Salvation, P 8

8 You cannot understand yourself alone. This is because you have no meaning apart from your rightful place in the Sonship, and the rightful place of the Sonship is God. This is your life, your eternity and your Self. It is of this that the Holy Spirit reminds you. It is this that the Holy Spirit sees. This vision frightens the ego because it is so calm. Peace is the ego’s greatest enemy because, according to its interpretation of reality, war is the guarantee of its survival. The ego becomes strong in strife. If you believe there is strife you will react viciously, because the idea of danger has entered your mind. The idea itself is an appeal to the ego. The Holy Spirit is as vigilant as the ego to the call of danger, opposing it with His strength just as the ego welcomes it. The Holy Spirit counters this welcome by welcoming peace. Eternity and peace are as closely related as are time and war.

The ego becomes strong in strife.

I see this is true. When I felt threatened in my workplace, my first thought was one of defense. If I accepted this thought, the ego reacted quickly, and soon my mind was filled with defensive and angry thoughts. The ego thinks of this as salvation. It was saving me from losing my job or losing status. When this happened, it was because I had called on the ego for help.  

It didn’t seem that I had anything to do with it because the call had become automatic for me, and I then hid my culpability from myself.  It felt like the ego jumped in on its own and got all vicious, and I was just the victim of a drive-by. Ha ha. The ego is mine. I made it. It has no power that I do not give it, and it has no control over me. It seems to have control only because I decided to pretend to be controlled. However, since I have taught myself to feel subject to the ego, I now must learn differently.  

Here is what I have discovered to keep this from happening. I avoid slipping into the ego defensive strategy (the first step into all-out war). I respond to the first glimmer of defense with an immediate decision to turn to the Voice for God. The Voice for peace is very strong; if it seems weak, it is only because the will for peace is weak.  

Seeing it Both Ways

I have very recently experienced it both ways, so I see the stark difference in the two ways of thinking. In the first experience, I eagerly joined forces with someone else to make war on a common enemy. I saw myself do it and made a call to Spirit, but the temptation to see this brother as guilty was very strong. It felt like the ego was stronger than Spirit, but really, I just wanted to hear the ego more than I wanted to hear Spirit. As a result, I had this very temporary sense of “winning” followed by deep regret. Could this ever be called salvation?  

The second experience came the next day, and it was very different. I had asked Holy Spirit to show me how I could undo the harm I had done. Later that morning, the opportunity presented itself. I was able to help him with a problem, and the Holy Spirit gave me strengthening words of encouragement. I know they came from Spirit because I had not planned the incident nor what I would say. When I asked for help, the help was provided.  

The first experience was disheartening. The second was joyful. Clearly, the choice for peace is my salvation. It is a long-standing (very long) habit to turn to the ego for my salvation, so it seems to require vigilance to learn a new way. Like the other things I have learned doing the Course, I start out learning that peace is a better choice than defense when I feel attacked. I practiced this in many circumstances until I understood that I cannot be attacked. That attack is just a belief in my mind. As I give up the idea that I am fragile and vulnerable and can be acted on by forces outside me, I realize I need no defense. This is the peace of God.

9 III. The Guide to Salvation, P 9

9 Perception derives meaning from relationships. Those you accept are the foundations of your beliefs. The separation is merely another term for a split mind. The ego is the symbol of separation, just as the Holy Spirit is the symbol of peace. What you perceive in others you are strengthening in yourself. You may let your mind misperceive, but the Holy Spirit lets your mind reinterpret its own misperceptions.

I noticed that the Holy Spirit is explained here in a slightly different way. The Holy Spirit is the symbol of peace in my mind. It allows my mind to reinterpret its own misconceptions. This is not the thinking mind, where the ego hangs out, not that constant barrage of mental gibberish. This mind that Jesus speaks of is our shared mind, the part of the mind that sleeps and is awakening.  

Using the Holy Spirit in the mind, we, the sleeping Son of God, reinterpret our garbled perceptions. So, when I ask the Holy Spirit to interpret or purify my thoughts, I am really choosing to use the right mind to do this for me. In doing so, I am choosing God over ego. I am choosing peace over war.  

Judgment Is a Misperception

When I have a judgment about someone, I am misperceiving. I am asking the ego, the symbol of separation, to interpret my perceptions. When the judgment is out of alignment with the truth, I see my mistake and I can choose to interpret through the Holy Spirit. How I see my brothers is a direct reflection of the beliefs I hold in my mind. How I see my brothers has nothing to do with reality and nothing to do with them.  

I have a friend who can be moody. Sometimes she is friendly and helpful. Other times, she becomes emotionally distant. In the past, when this happened, I thought she was mad at me. Because I couldn’t find a reason for her anger, I became defensive, which didn’t help either of us. I had to let the Holy Spirit reinterpret this situation since the ego wasn’t helping. He started by reminding me that my upset was not about my friend, even though, from the ego’s point of view, it seemed to be. The Holy Spirit encouraged me to look at it from that perspective so I could see what I needed to change within myself so that I could be happy despite my friend’s mood.  

Looking at My Beliefs

I saw my belief that I could be victimized and let the Holy Spirit help me remember that this is not so. I saw my belief that anything outside my mind could affect me. He showed me that her attitude wasn’t the problem, that it was how I thought about it that was upsetting me. I turned it around by asking myself how I would feel if I didn’t need my friend to be different than she was. I could see that if I didn’t need anything from her, I would be happy no matter what she did or said. So, the problem really was in my mind only.  

This is why I don’t try to change my behavior. I don’t try to see others differently. Instead, I notice how I see them and then choose the Holy Spirit as my Advisor, my Interpreter. As I allow that to happen, I will see the light in my brothers, and I will be reminded of the light in me. It is a win-win outcome. These relationships, all of them without exception, are my way home. They mirror my mind so I can be clearly aware of the need for correction. I am no longer confused about this. The correction is never about them; it is always about me.  

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