ACIM 5. VII. The Decision for God, P 3-5. Why should you listen to the endless insane calls you think are made upon you, when you can know the Voice for God is in you?

VII. The Decision for God, P3

3 Why should you listen to the endless insane calls you think are made upon you, when you can know the Voice for God is in you? God commended His Spirit to you, and asks that you commend yours to Him. He wills to keep it in perfect peace, because you are of one mind and spirit with Him. Excluding yourself from the Atonement is the ego’s last-ditch defense of its own existence. It reflects both the ego’s need to separate, and your willingness to side with its separateness. This willingness means that you do not want to be healed.

Why, indeed, would I listen to the ego voice when I have the Voice for God in me and available to me at all times. The resistance to that Voice is the ego mind trying to maintain itself, but it is a hopeless effort. What I truly want is mine. I truly want perfect peace. I truly want the Atonement. So, I ask the Holy Spirit to remove from my mind all thoughts that do not bring me closer to God.

God gave me Himself, and now I give Him myself.

There was a time when I read these words and felt a thrill of fear go through me at the thought of giving myself to God. It was as if I thought God’s kind and loving desire to keep me in perfect peace was a trick. That, of course, was the ego pitching its last-ditch defense for its own existence, but because I was still closely identified with the ego, I thought those were my thoughts. Now I know differently.

My thoughts are the thoughts I think with God. I want to know only those thoughts and my oneness with God. I want the peace and the joy, and I want to feel again the Love that I am. This day, I ask that the Holy Spirit protect my peace. I give permission to Him to remove from my mind all unpeaceful thoughts. They no longer serve my purpose.

4 VII. The Decision for God, P4

4 But the time is now. You have not been asked to work out the plan of salvation yourself because, as I told you before, the remedy could not be of your making. God Himself gave you the perfect Correction for everything you made that is not in accord with His holy Will. I am making His plan perfectly explicit to you, and will also tell you of your part in it, and how urgent it is to fulfil it. God weeps at the “sacrifice” of His children who believe they are lost to Him.

The time is now for me! If you are reading this book and haven’t tossed it aside by now, this is the time for you, too. It is time to wake up, time to lay aside the dream of separation and embrace our true Self. We have sacrificed our joy and peace for far too long, and it is time to let all that go. I have been asking frequently for some days now to be reminded of what I am.

When I feel sad or fearful, when I am angry or upset in any way, to any degree, I ask again, “What am I?” I am ready to know. The ego mind that loves its stories and doesn’t want to give them up resists this change in direction. Fearful thoughts and distracting situations assault me, but as this happens, I meet each one with the question, “What am I?”

I am Spirit, a divine being. I am His Son.

How can I be subject to the ego fears and guilt? How can I be subject to sickness, pain, or suffering of any kind? I remind myself of the passage in Lesson 190 that says I dominate everything I see. I dominate physical pain and mental anguish, and I dominate the little distractions and the big ones. As I realize that my holy self cannot be assaulted from without, I see the harmlessness in all these things.

Having realized their harmlessness, I ponder what Jesus said next in Lesson 190, that what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness. I open my heart and mind to understand this more fully. Every word in A Course in Miracles is meaningful and important. And I have been doing this long enough to realize that my understanding deepens as my desire to awaken overtakes my fear of awakening. As this happens, I want to understand, and it is like a light coming on and illuminating the words.

I was reminded of something this morning.

What is meant by all things I see becoming a source of innocence? I woke up at 3:48 this morning. I was expecting to wake up at 5:00 or later, so I lay there for a few minutes, expecting to go back to sleep, but that didn’t happen. For a while, my mind was conflicted as the ego insisted on its way. It has definite ideas about what I need as far as sleep goes. But I dominate all things I see, and I see that it is now nearly 4:00, and I am awake.

I let go of the idea that lack of sleep is the enemy I must fight. I let go of the idea that my body is the decision-maker and dominates my mind. And I remembered what I am. The idea of sleep deprivation ceases to be the boogeyman I thought it was, and it appears harmless to me now. I realized how nice it would be this morning to have so much time to commune with Spirit and to write.

I see that this idea of not getting enough sleep, which has always haunted me, caused anxiety, and seemed to drain my energy, was just a thought in a confused mind. It is really innocent. Ha! That is it! That is how the things I see are innocent. They do not cause my unhappiness. I caused that, and because I caused it, I can stop causing it. As everything is innocent now, everything is holy now.

5 VII. The Decision for God, P5

5 Whenever you are not wholly joyous, it is because you have reacted with a lack of love to one of God’s creations. Perceiving this as “sin” you become defensive because you expect attack. The decision to react in this way is yours, and can therefore be undone. It cannot be undone by repentance in the usual sense, because this implies guilt. If you allow yourself to feel guilty, you will reinforce the error rather than allow it to be undone for you.

This is a helpful paragraph because it succinctly explains the process that keeps us in hell. I react without love, so I become defensive because I expect attack. Now I feel guilty, and thus the whole thing is reinforced. And through this endless cycle, I keep the idea of separation, which is hell, going, no end in sight. But Jesus says I do have a way out.

The decision to react is mine. I did it so I could undo it. God even gave me the Holy Spirit to break the cycle. The process of undoing the ego is really simple, but when I allow guilt to enter into the process, it gets clogged up, and I wind up stuck in the cycle. I know how this works because I have done it enough to qualify as an expert. Now, I am trying to get my innocence badge instead. ~smile~

It seems so simple.

I notice that I don’t feel happy. My thoughts show me I have mentally attacked someone. I have made a harsh judgment or somehow failed to love that one. I see how painful that choice was, and so I gladly ask the Holy Spirit to undo what I have done, to remove from my mind the attack thoughts that are blocking my happiness. Easy peasy, right?

One day, when I was still working, I became upset with a fellow employee. I was checking on a customer’s system because the office told me their ordering pattern was disrupted. I needed to see what was wrong. A person is supposed to keep up with this sort of thing, but he didn’t do a good job on this one. So here it is, after 5:00, and still hot and muggy, and I am getting very tired. Now, I had to drive out of my way to see this system.

The more I thought about it, the angrier I became. The ego mind was just chattering away about how put-out I was. I would do something about the negligent employee when I returned to the office. I felt my jaw ache because it had been clinched for so long. My body contracted. My neck was stiff, my stomach tight. I noticed how unhappy I was and that just a little earlier, all day, I had been happy and peaceful, and suddenly I wasn’t.

I wanted to return to my peaceful state so I asked for help.

But I also noticed that I resisted the help. I kept thinking how wrong the other person was. What had happened was that I felt guilty for my foray into egoland. I realized I felt guilty because I knew I was attacking him for doing something I had done myself. But, now more than ever, with all this guilt piling up, I needed to keep this guy guilty to justify my attack. Every time I tried to forgive him, I started to feel guilty, so nothing changed except the direction of my attack.

I asked the Holy Spirit to help me see this differently. I asked Him to remove from my mind all the attack thoughts. Finally, I realized that I did not want to make my brother guilty, and I didn’t want to make myself guilty either. Forgiveness was the only solution. I asked that He remove from my mind the belief in guilt. There is no good purpose to guilt. Whether he is guilty or I am guilty, my belief in guilt keeps guilt going, which keeps the idea of separation going.

What I needed to do was to make a different decision, one that did not include guilt. I accepted the Atonement and allowed my mind to be healed. Peace returned the moment this decision was made, and I felt silly about the whole thing. No one needed to be guilty, and there was nothing to defend against. Without my fear and the resultant need to defend myself, it was clear that we were all innocent. We are all holy.

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