ACIM Chapter 6. V. A. To Have, Give All to All, P 3, 4

ACIM Chapter 6. V. A. To Have, Give All to All, P 3, 4. I have said that the Holy Spirit is the motivation for miracles. He always tells you that only the mind is real, because only the mind can be shared.

A. To Have, Give All to All, P 3

³ I have said that the Holy Spirit is the motivation for miracles. He always tells you that only the mind is real, because only the mind can be shared. The body is separate, and therefore cannot be part of you. To be of one mind is meaningful, but to be one body is meaningless. By the laws of mind, then, the body is meaningless.

Obviously, when the Course says that we are One, it does not mean we share one body. It would clearly be a meaningless statement. I didn’t put it together like this, though, and realize that logically, it follows that the body is meaningless. But, of course, it is. I often say that the body is not real, and while that is true, it is hard for my thinking mind to make sense of that idea. The body feels very real, and even Jesus says that we are not to deny that we think we have a body.

⁸The body is merely part of your experience in the physical world. ⁹Its abilities can be and frequently are overevaluated. ¹⁰However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence in this world. ¹¹Those who do so are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial. (ACIM, T-2.IV.3:8-11)

What is easier for my mind to grasp is that the body is meaningless since what cannot be shared is meaningless.

The ego “me” is meaningless for the same reason: it cannot be shared. Neither one can be who I am. I remember a time when this first began to sink in. It was a shaky moment when I felt this more deeply than before. I had the thought that I could not go back to living a meaningless life. That was followed by the understanding that what I really meant was that I could not stand the thought that I am meaningless. The question, of course, is who is the “I” that is meaningless.

I think what happened is that I questioned the meaning of the ego, and the ego responded with fear. The ego does not want to be seen as meaningless because then why would I continue to be interested in it? I was upset because, in a moment of profound confusion, I identified completely with the ego, and so it felt like I was saying that I am meaningless. Questioning the ego at this basic level will continue to elicit fear as long as I am vacillating between identities.  I appreciate this reminder from Jesus that the body cannot be part of me.

4 A. To Have, Give All to All, P 4

⁴ To the Holy Spirit, there is no order of difficulty in miracles. This is familiar enough to you by now, but it has not yet become believable. Therefore, you do not understand it and cannot use it. We have too much to accomplish on behalf of the Kingdom to let this crucial concept slip away. It is a real foundation stone of the thought system I teach and want you to teach. You cannot perform miracles without believing it, because it is a belief in perfect equality. Only one equal gift can be offered to the equal Sons of God, and that is full appreciation. Nothing more and nothing less. Without a range order of difficulty is meaningless, and there must be no range in what you offer to your brother.

The reason there is no order of difficulty in miracles is that the miracle is a correction in perception, and perception is how I see things. So, all that is happening is that I am learning to see what is really there. How could one corrected thought be harder than another? A thought is a thought, even if a particular thought triggers more fear or guilt than another. It is still just a thought.

My experience has gone something like this.

I have experienced sickness, asked that my mind be healed of the belief in death (sickness), and seen the effect of the wrong-minded thought disappear. That is, the sickness disappeared. I have seen this happen in very dramatic ways. The body was not healed; the mind was healed. But it is the sick mind that projects the sick body, and so when the mind is healed, it projects a healed body.

The ego world is based on separation, including the idea of levels and ranges. So, to the ego mind, one type of sickness is different than another, and one type would be harder to heal than another. This cannot be true because everything is only an idea, and you can’t have a bigger or smaller idea. I can have an idea I am simply not willing to release, but that doesn’t make the idea bigger or harder.

Accepting that the world and the body are not real, but simply the reflection of beliefs held in the mind has made it easier to accept that miracles have no order of difficulty. It is essential that I fully accept this premise if I am to perform miracles. The truth is whole, and wholeness doesn’t vary. A fear of sickness, a fear of poverty, and a fear of heights are all the same. They are exactly the same “size,” and the solution to these problems are exactly the same.

In my ego mind the fear of heights and the fear of losing a child, for example, loom large and firmly rooted.

I see them as giant sequoias with roots going so deep, I cannot imagine getting to them. I see myself with a little spade removing the dirt from around the roots but with little hope of taking down that giant tree. At the same time, I see a cold or the flu as weeds in my garden. Pull those suckers up and throw them away. I don’t get sick often and the sickness is mild and short-lived generally because I can’t sustain a belief in them, and they can’t exist without my belief.

Of course, the truth is, those beliefs are all the same size and none of them is more deeply rooted than the other. I know this is true, and yet I have held onto certain beliefs even as I asked that they be healed, and doing this makes one seem harder to heal than another and encourages the idea that there is an order of difficulty in miracles.

My job here is to allow my mind to be healed, allowing miracles to be performed through me. In this way, I join Jesus in awakening the Sonship. I cannot do my part if I use my fear to perpetuate the belief in order of difficulty. If I offer miracles that are less than whole, then I am really offering magic and not miracles. When I am afraid, this seems like an impossible task, but really, I just change my mind. I change my mind all the time so I know I can do it.

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