ACIM Chapter 6. III. The Relinquishment of Attack, P 4

ACIM III. The Relinquishment of Attack, P 4. Since you cannot not teach, your salvation lies in teaching the exact opposite of everything the ego believes.

III. The Relinquishment of Attack, P 4

⁴ Since you cannot not teach, your salvation lies in teaching the exact opposite of everything the ego believes. This is how you will learn the truth that will set you free, and will keep you free as others learn it of you. The only way to have peace is to teach peace. By teaching peace you must learn it yourself, because you cannot teach what you still dissociate. Only thus can you win back the knowledge that you threw away. An idea that you share you must have. It awakens in your mind through the conviction of teaching it. Everything you teach you are learning. Teach only love, and learn that love is yours and you are love.

Being a teacher is not a choice we make; it is simply what we are. We are teachers, and we teach all the time. Our choice lies in what we teach. I STOP when I notice that I am teaching something I don’t want to learn. This is because I am clear now about my purpose and what I want. I want the peace of God. I want to wake up to my reality, to remember who I am. I don’t want to teach anything that does not bring me closer to my deepest, truest desire.

Here is where I used to get confused about this. How do I teach peace if I don’t feel peaceful? It seems like such a vicious cycle. I feel anxious and afraid, and this makes me defend and attack. I want to stop this and teach peace, but there is no place in that cycle for me to jump in with a new way of doing things. It is a closed, self-perpetuating cycle.

Now I know how it is done.

I shift everything through my desire. I am in this ego belief system because I desire an experience of separation. I get out of it by shifting my desire to one of peace and love. I already have a built-in solution, which is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit works from outside the closed system and will shift me from chaos to peace. The Holy Spirit is activated through my desire for peace.

So here is the way I visualize this happening. I desired an experience of separation, and this brought me into chaos. I am through with that experience and want to return to peace, and that desire activates the Holy Spirit in my mind, so I am shown a different way to see. I begin to experience peace, which becomes what I teach because this is what I am.

The more I teach peace the more I want it, and the faster my desire changes. When my only desire is for peace, I will teach only peace, and there will be no more chaos because there is no desire for chaos. Through my desire and with the Holy Spirit, I am creating a different cycle. The experience I wrote about yesterday is an example of how this works.

I became disturbed by someone at work.

I lost my peace, so I was teaching and learning fear, and the cycle got away from me. To find my way back, I first had to realize that I didn’t want to win but just wanted to return to peace. This was the choice I had to make to allow the Holy Spirit to heal my mind. Then, I had to go through the process of seeing what went wrong and choosing again. The Holy Spirit does not heal what we want to keep, so that step was important.

Once I mined the situation for the treasure it held, that is, the wrong-minded thoughts that I no longer want to teach, and then once I chose against them, I was back on the right track, teaching peace and so having peace. As Jesus says in this paragraph:

 An idea that you share you must have. It awakens in your mind through the conviction of teaching it.

Now I will protect my peace in this situation by asking a different question when it comes up again. Instead of asking, “How can I win,” I will ask, “How can I love?” Thus, I will continue to teach what I want to learn.

These days, it is simpler for me to recognize my errors and choose again.

For instance, I read about the problems that would occur when the government shut down until the politicians could come to an agreement. I saw how many people would suffer because of it, and my next thought was that Congress would come to a speedier recovery if they had to suffer the effects themselves. The next thought was that it would never happen because they would not vote into law, something that affected them negatively and kept them from forcing their will on the nation.

As soon as I had those thoughts, I lost my peace. I knew that this was not what I wanted. I can’t be happy if I abandon the truth every time something fails to go my way. I let those thoughts go, and I chose again. I still don’t want to see people suffer from this, and I still think we should not let a small group of men hold our country hostage, and I will express my preference to my congressmen. And I will always vote against those who do this kind of thing. I will do what is called for in the story. But what I won’t do is believe in their guilt.

Neither will I believe that I am a victim of their actions.

The story is affected by it, but I am not the story. I will not believe I am affected by anything other than my own thoughts and beliefs. I will not defend myself because it is only in my defenselessness that my safety lies. What I can do that is helpful on all levels is to extend love to everyone involved and to hold them in the light of truth. I will remember who they really are. And if I see myself becoming confused about that, I will forgive myself and choose again.