ACIM Chapter 6. V. C. Be Vigilant Only for God and His Kingdom, P 9, 10. Truth is without illusions and therefore within the Kingdom. Everything outside the Kingdom is illusion.
ACIM Chapter 6. V. C. Be Vigilant Only for God and His Kingdom, P 9, 10
C. Be Vigilant Only for God and His Kingdom, P 9
9 Truth is without illusions and therefore within the Kingdom. Everything outside the Kingdom is illusion. When you threw truth away you saw yourself as if you were without it. By making another kingdom that you valued, you did not keep only the Kingdom of God in your mind, and thus placed part of your mind outside it. What you made has imprisoned your will, and given you a sick mind that must be healed. Your vigilance against this sickness is the way to heal it. Once your mind is healed it radiates health, and thereby teaches healing. This establishes you as a teacher who teaches like me. Vigilance was required of me as much as of you, and those who choose to teach the same thing must be in agreement about what they believe.
The Kingdom of God is made of only truth with no illusions. Then there is the kingdom I made outside of truth, the kingdom of illusions. Now I have a split mind, split between Reality and illusions. Because I value my little kingdom, a part of my mind is now imprisoned by these beliefs. I have the truth in my mind, and I also have the illusions in my mind. I must choose what I want to believe and to protect my choice, I must be vigilant for it.
When I first started mind-watching, it seemed like a real chore.
In fact, the first day I became truly devoted to watching my mind for ego thoughts and asking that my thinking be corrected, I was exhausted. I felt like I had taken a beating. That was because my mind was still very conflicted about what I wanted.
I wanted to wake up from the dream of separation. I wanted to relinquish my own little illusory kingdom in favor of my place in the Kingdom of God. But I also valued parts of my world, and so I wanted to keep it, too. Since it is not possible to have both, I had exhausted myself going back and forth, choosing first illusions then choosing to be healed, then back to illusions, over and over.
I have been vigilant in watching my mind for many years now, so it is not really a chore anymore. I do it all the time, and I do it without thinking about it. Noticing the ego thoughts and choosing again is just what I do, and I am no longer conflicted about my desire to awaken. Another change is that I no longer feel guilty for the thoughts I find, and that makes the process a lot easier. Noticing how much more peaceful I am now motivates me to continue.
This morning, I noticed a judgmental thought about world affairs.
So, I asked the Holy Spirit what to think instead. I know that I cannot be at peace as long as there are conflicting thoughts in my mind. I cannot know my Self as God created me if I hold conflicting thoughts. So, I want my mind to hold only what I think with God. To achieve this, I ask the Holy Spirit to choose God for me.
I have been asked if we ever get finished with this process and if there is ever a time when we do not have to be vigilant. My answer has always been that so far, in my experience, I have not seen an end to the need for vigilance. In this paragraph, Jesus tells us that even he had to remain vigilant. If I want what Jesus has, then I must do what Jesus did and teach only that. I will say that vigilance has gotten easier and more joyful for me. I assume that by the time I reach the same level of healing as Jesus, it will be unnecessary. But evidently, the need for vigilance remains, at least for the time being.
Here is a link to the little book, Inner Healing that changed my life. From this book, I learned a simple little process to watch my mind and allow it to be healed. I will be forever grateful to Dan Joseph for writing it.
C. Be Vigilant Only for God and His Kingdom, P 10
10 The third step, then, is a statement of what you want to believe, and entails a willingness to relinquish everything else. The Holy Spirit will enable you to take this step, if you follow Him. Your vigilance is the sign that you want Him to guide you. Vigilance does require effort, but only until you learn that effort itself is unnecessary. You have exerted great effort to preserve what you made because it was not true. Therefore, you must now turn your effort against it. Only this can cancel out the need for effort, and call upon the being which you both have and are. This recognition is wholly without effort since it is already true and needs no protection. It is in the perfect safety of God. Therefore, inclusion is total and creation is without limit.
Jesus sums it up in this paragraph and reminds us that what we have and are is unassailable and does not need either our effort or our protection. Since we have not yet made that decision, vigilance is still important. We know that we can be vigilant and that we do expend great effort to protect our thought system. We do this constantly to keep the separation idea in place. Now, our job is to turn that effort and that vigilance to our true thought system. The Holy Spirit will enable us to do this if we simply follow Him.
I had slightly disturbing dreams right before I woke up, and that affected my mood.
I lay there for a few minutes, wishing I could just go back to sleep. When I got up and started moving around, I noticed a vague uneasiness. I didn’t feel awful or anything, just not happy. Suddenly, I remembered that this was just a choice. I can return to happiness at any time. So, I did.
Being happy is actually my job. I experienced a significant shift, and happiness seems to have occurred. I don’t know how this happened, really, but there it is, and I like it. Even so, I have to remain vigilant for my happiness. The ego will try to assert itself and create a mood that seems more appropriate to the circumstances. Since this has been the way of things for as long as I can remember, I have to remain highly vigilant to stop myself from following the ego mind.
The other day, I answered the ego’s call to fear and afterward was stunned at how quickly and completely the ego mind asserted itself. At another time, I would have been discouraged and fearful that I had set myself back or maybe that I just couldn’t do this. It was different this time. I just looked at what had happened with the Holy Spirit.
I told Him that I didn’t know what to do with this, but He did, and I was willing to hand it over to Him. These fearful stories still show up, and sometimes, it seems I am still attracted to them, but that is not what I want. I want to be happy. I want to remember who I am. And I have the means to do this through the Holy Spirit.
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