ACIM Chapter 6. V. The Lessons of the Holy Spirit P 3, 4

ACIM Chapter 6. V. The Lessons of the Holy Spirit P 3. 4. A wise teacher teaches through approach, not avoidance.

V. The Lessons of the Holy Spirit, P 3

3 A wise teacher teaches through approach, not avoidance. He does not emphasize what you must avoid to escape from harm, but what you need to learn to have joy. Consider the fear and confusion a child would experience if he were told, “Do not do this because it will hurt you and make you unsafe; but if you do that instead, you will escape from harm and be safe, and then you will not be afraid.” It is surely better to use only three words: “Do only that!” This simple statement is perfectly clear, easily understood and very easily remembered.

My mind is finally becoming simple. I would never have believed that this was a good thing, but really it is. My thinking processes are simplified. My prayers are simplified. It is the ego that chooses complexity, and it is only when I am especially identified with the ego that I become mired in that complexity.

Here is an example. Some years ago, my son was recovering from back surgery and was supposed to be very careful not to jar his spine until the fusion was strong. His dog jumped on him, and he flinched. He was afraid he had damaged the surgery, but as the pain resided, he felt it would be OK.

When I heard about this, I felt fearful for him.

I had a lot of thoughts about what he should be doing and what he should avoid, and this was painful because I couldn’t do anything about them. If I were with him, I would probably have driven him nuts and caused him to be more afraid. As I watched these thoughts about how he could protect himself, I had the thought that I wished I could put him back in the womb.

This woke me up to what I was doing, and I tried to stop the flow of ego defenses. It was hard for me to stop the ego fear thoughts once they got going. I flailed around for another way to think, another way to see this. I tried to focus on the positive or not to think at all. Though I knew my thinking was screwy, now that I was in the fear thoughts, I became confused about how to extricate myself.

But my true desire was to have a healed mind, and though it is not yet my only desire, it was my strongest desire, and it was answered.  One thought emerged from the jumble of thoughts. “I don’t know how to achieve peace right now, but I want peace.” Then, I remembered a very simple prayer. I said, “Here I am, God. I rest in Your certainty.” And I remembered Lisa Natoli’s advice to be still and just let God be God. I stood there in my desire to be healed and let peace flow through me.

It became simple as I stopped trying to figure it all out.

The ego always has a plan for whatever I want to do, and that plan will be complex because the complexity hides the ego’s true goal. Above all, the ego plan will be designed to fail ultimately. The ego is designed to seek but not find because it is the design that ensures the ego continues to exist. God’s plan always works. I had to go back to resting in God a few times, but then it was done.

Here is another example. When I began to understand that to enter the Kingdom, I had to let go of the idea that my brother was guilty, I often became confused. I was looking at his behavior and seeing guilt, knowing that I had to forgive what I saw and see him as innocent. What a mess my mind was as I tried to do that! The ego took me round and round as I tried various ways to see him without guilt.

My desire to see innocence grew greater than my desire to place blame.

With this change in perspective, the whole thing was simplified. I suddenly realized that my brother was innocent. He is never guilty, no matter what I show myself with my eyes. He starts out innocent, and he remains innocent. If I see something else, I must be confused. It was complicated before because I started out believing my brother was guilty.

From that perspective, the ego presented me with various solutions, none of which worked because the original premise was faulty. But I stayed stuck in the ego thinking for a long time because I first wanted someone to be guilty and then because the ego plans were so byzantine that I couldn’t extricate myself. What saved me was simplicity itself. There was nothing to solve because there was no problem.

Here is something that Cate Grieves posted on Facebook.

Yes, we must let go of guilt by understanding that nothing has happened. Yes, in the dream, we may have been unkind and even mean, but when you look back with the Holy Spirit, he shows you that you were just fearful (in ego), and thus the lack of love came from joining with the ego. Now, you just make another choice NOW. We start where we are. We let go of the past completely and join with the loving presence in our mind that looks on unfair treatment and reminds the mind it is not real.

This is a dream of death. It hasn’t the power to stop a feather from falling. All there is, is love 

4 V. The Lessons of the Holy Spirit, P 4

4 The Holy Spirit never itemizes errors because He does not frighten children, and those who lack wisdom are children. Yet He always answers their call, and His dependability makes them more certain. Children do confuse fantasy and reality, and they are frightened because they do not recognize the difference. The Holy Spirit makes no distinction among dreams. He merely shines them away. His light is always the call to awaken, whatever you have been dreaming. Nothing lasting lies in dreams, and the Holy Spirit, shining with the Light from God Himself, speaks only for what lasts forever.

I value knowing the Holy Spirit doesn’t itemize errors because knowing this when I hear that voice telling me all I have done wrong, I know it is not the Holy Spirit, so it must be ego. I value knowing that the Holy Spirit always answers. If I don’t hear His answer, it must be because I am listening to the ego instead.

I used to fall into complete confusion at times. This would happen when I allowed fear to take over my mind. For instance, when my son was in the hospital is an example. I was so afraid for him that my mind was stunned. Though I knew I was thinking wrong, fear kept me from seeing clearly for a while. I couldn’t discern truth from fantasy.

The saving grace for me was that I knew what was happening.

I knew I was thinking with the ego, so I was able to eventually pull my attention away from fantasy and allow myself to be guided to truth. But that experience reminded me of what it is like to be lost in my fantasies. It also reminded me that the Holy Spirit always listens and always answers, but it is completely up to me to decide to hear Him.

The experience I had at that time seemed very big to me, very important. It seemed different than my normal, everyday moments of temporary confusion. Moments such as when a politician does something that I feel is self-serving and potentially harmful, and for a moment, I think they are the enemy. But these two experiences are not different. They are exactly the same.  The Holy Spirit doesn’t see a big or small error; he simply sees error that he corrects, and we accept it according to our willingness.

Categorizing and sizing my mistakes is an error I can still make. Some just feel bigger or more important to me, even though I understand this could not be true. My thoughts are true, or they are not. That makes sense to me, but it doesn’t always feel that way. The Holy Spirit doesn’t suffer from that confusion. He knows that an error is simply a lack of love and that the solution is always love. One problem, one solution. Simple. No matter how it seems to me in my story, the Holy Spirit has but one goal, and that is to awaken me.

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