ACIM Chapter 6. V. B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, P 1, 2

ACIM Chapter 6. V. B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, P 1, 2. All who believe in separation have a basic fear of retaliation and abandonment.

B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It

¹ All who believe in separation have a basic fear of retaliation and abandonment. They believe in attack and rejection, so that is what they perceive and teach and learn. These insane ideas are clearly the result of dissociation and projection. What you teach you are, but it is quite apparent that you can teach wrongly, and can therefore teach yourself wrong. Many thought I was attacking them, even though it was apparent I was not. An insane learner learns strange lessons. What you must recognize is that when you do not share a thought system, you are weakening it. Those who believe in it therefore perceive this as an attack on them. This is because everyone identifies himself with his thought system, and every thought system centers on what you believe you are. If the center of the thought system is true, only truth extends from it. But if a lie is at its center, only deception proceeds from it.

Because I believe in separation, I have a basic fear of retaliation and abandonment. I see that this is true. And as long as I continue to believe in this, I will teach it through my behavior and through my thoughts. This will reinforce the belief for myself and others. However, knowing that this belief is in my mind and knowing that I want my mind to be healed is helpful. I can watch my mind for thoughts that reflect these beliefs and ask for healing.

The whole point of this life is to use it to wake up from the belief in separation.

So, I don’t want to teach separation through teaching retaliation and abandonment. To stop teaching it, I must first realize when I am doing it. Thus, I stay vigilant for this kind of thinking and its projections.

One example I can think of is the belief I used to have that someone I care about didn’t love me. For instance, I would miss my daughter and realize I hadn’t heard from her in a while. I would text her, and if she didn’t respond, I would worry that she was mad at me about something I said or failed to do. Then, I think she was too sensitive and easily offended. If I stayed with this long enough, I would begin to resent her. This kind of thing used to happen a lot.

If I questioned this, I saw that the only thing that happened was that I missed my daughter, and she did not respond to my text. Everything else was something that I thought and was based on the belief in abandonment. I believed I could be abandoned, so I projected a story of abandonment. The abandonment didn’t need to actually happen; the perception that it happened could cause upset. If I stayed with the story, I would project guilt onto her, and if I didn’t stop my crazy thinking, I could start to plan my retaliation. “Fine, if she doesn’t want to talk to me, I don’t want to talk to her.”

I learned to accept the atonement for believing I could be abandoned.

This happened as I learned to question my beliefs about abandonment. Eventually, it became clear that I was abandoning myself with my perceptions. Perceptions are not truth, but given to the Holy Spirit, they can be brought closer to truth.

If I didn’t allow my thinking to be corrected, I would teach abandonment and retaliation somehow, even if it was subtle. My mom used to be really fond of doing this through martyring herself and expecting us to accept the guilt for her suffering. I used to catch myself doing this sometimes, too, just mentioning casually that I had been concerned when I didn’t hear back from her right away.

When I heard myself say that kind of thing, I knew that I had fallen for the ego again. I didn’t want to teach this, but I would do so until I accepted healing for the belief driving it. I cannot be abandoned; therefore, I never need to retaliate. There was a lot of ego resistance to this lesson. I couldn’t break this ugly cycle from within the belief system, but I could accept help from outside it.

This is what the Holy Spirit continues to do for me.

Once in a while, this kind of thinking comes up again, but now I recognize what is happening, and immediately I accept the Atonement for it. I do this before I can project guilt and teach others abandonment is real and they are guilty of it. I do this by welcoming the thoughts and feelings so that the Holy Spirit can heal me. These feelings are not pleasant, and now that I know I am not guilty of having the beliefs, it all passes quickly, and I am free. I have forgiven an untrue belief on behalf of us all, and I am happy about that.

B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, P 2

² All good teachers realize that only fundamental change will last, but they do not begin at that level. Strengthening motivation for change is their first and foremost goal. It is also their last and final one. Increasing motivation for change in the learner is all that a teacher need do to guarantee change. Change in motivation is a change of mind, and this will inevitably produce fundamental change because the mind is fundamental.

My motivation for everything was happiness, and I used to think my happiness was predicated on winning. I wanted to make more money than others. I wanted others to look at me with envy and wish they were like me. When I was a teenager, I fantasized about returning to my old neighborhood as a famous and rich person, and everyone would see me and wish they had been my friends when they had the chance. Mostly, they would wish they were me.

This desire to win showed up in all sorts of ways. I would want to be the one to win the argument. I wanted to win the argument more than I wanted to love the other person or be happy. More to the fact, I thought being happy meant winning the argument. I wanted my child to be the smartest and most attractive. I wanted my husband to be the envy of all my friends. It seemed I was the center of the universe, and I thought everything revolved around me. What I wanted was the only thing that mattered, and I thought I knew what I wanted.

I still want to be happy.

But now my motivation for happiness has changed. I am no longer motivated by the desire to win because I see that winning doesn’t provide true happiness. If I win, I may feel a momentary surge of adrenaline, but that’s all. It quickly wanes, and as the pendulum swings back, I feel the loss of that adrenaline surge as a loss of happiness. I have discovered that the loss goes much deeper than no longer feeling the brief elation of winning.

For me to win, someone else had to lose. I discovered that this was the problem, the reason happiness evaded me no matter how many times I won. Now, I have discovered a new motivation. I wanted to remember my true nature, to join with my brothers, and so know I was One with my Creator. In other words, I wanted to wake up from this sad dream of separation.

At first, I tried to cling to my old motivation while embracing my new motivation.

I would win and feel momentarily elated, and then I would feel bad because winning meant losing. I couldn’t have both the win and the happiness. When I started to look at things differently, I realized that the joy I felt in joining was so much more satisfying and long-lived than the happiness of winning. In fact, winning no longer felt happy to me when it meant my brother had to lose.

Everything changed when my motivation changed. I lost my interest in competitive games. I lost interest in making the most money and in winning arguments. In fact, I lost interest in arguments altogether. Instead of trying to win an argument, I became interested in what we had in common. I began to want for my brother what I wanted for myself, and seeing him happy made me happy. When my motivation changed, my life changed in a fundamental way. The change was in my mind, and the change of mind created a change in behavior that changed my life.

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