ACIM Chapter 7. III. The Reality of the Kingdom, P 1, 2

ACIM Chapter 7. III. The Reality of the Kingdom, P 1, 2. The Holy Spirit teaches one lesson, and applies it to all individuals in all situations.

III. The Reality of the Kingdom

¹ The Holy Spirit teaches one lesson, and applies it to all individuals in all situations. Being conflict-free, He maximizes all efforts and all results. By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that all power is yours. Its application does not matter. It is always maximal. Your vigilance does not establish it as yours, but it does enable you to use it always and in all ways. When I said “I am with you always,” I meant it literally. I am not absent to anyone in any situation. Because I am always with you, you are the way, the truth and the life. You did not make this power, any more than I did. It was created to be shared, and therefore cannot be meaningfully perceived as belonging to anyone at the expense of another. Such a perception makes it meaningless by eliminating or overlooking its real and only meaning.

I want to look at this paragraph carefully. Here is what I understand.

1. The Holy Spirit teaches one lesson. In studying the Course with its many words, I can easily lose track of this. I am always learning one thing only: that I am one with God, a part of God, in Him, and never any place else. Nothing that is not true of God can be true of me. Everything true of God is true of me. Because the Holy Spirit teaches only this one thing, there is no conflict, and so it applies to everyone and everything and the teaching is, therefore, maximized.

2. The Holy Spirit is teaching me that I am powerful. No, that is not right. He is teaching me that all power is mine. All power. The power of God is mine.  Its application does not matter. The power of God is mine to use regardless of how I choose to use it. I am using the power of God to make up a world that could never be, and that is why it seems so real. The implication, of course, is that this same power can easily dispel the illusion according to my desire to be free of it.

3. My vigilance does not establish it as mine.

I talk about vigilance all the time. I am vigilant for my thoughts and vigilant for God. Vigilance has gotten me where I am now. But all the vigilance in the world, the most perfect vigilance imaginable does not establish the power of God as mine. Lack of vigilance cannot undo this power, which is mine. What vigilance does do is make this power available to me.

In making the illusory world, we blocked out reality, and now we must unblock it. I imagine it as a wall that we made to keep the truth out, and now, block by block I must remove the wall to become aware of what is there, always has been there, and will forever be there. It is for this work, the undoing of the ego wall, that I am vigilant. I watch closely for any remaining blocks to the awareness of love’s presence.

4. Here is my favorite sentence, maybe my favorite in the whole book.

When I said “I am with you always,” I meant it literally. I am not absent to anyone in any situation.

I take great comfort in knowing that I am not alone, and since the beginning of my study of the Course, I have come to love and trust my elder brother absolutely. What a relief to know that he does not abandon me in any situation I might put myself in.

It is also a comfort to be reminded that we are one. We cannot be separate. Jesus and I and you are all one mind. We are not any of us absent from each other. In this illusion of separation, it is hard to know this, so I often remind myself in many ways. When I become discouraged, afraid, angry, even when I am only sad or lethargic, any feeling that is not reflective of God, I have tried to become absent to myself.

This is not possible, but if I believe I can do this, then it will feel as if I have abandoned myself. Whenever I feel these ungodly things about anyone else, I have tried to abandon them. Even though I cannot do that either, the power that is mine to use in any way I choose will create an illusion so real that I will think I have succeeded and be flooded by guilt for my imagined sin.

I am greatly relieved to know that nothing has actually happened.

Jesus is never absent from me and all power is shared equally by all of God’s Son, I am not ever truly absent to myself or to anyone. I have not sinned, and I can forgive the idea that sin is possible. We are One. We are God’s Son. And thus, we are powerful in our Oneness. What is true is always true, and nothing can change that.

2 III. The Reality of the Kingdom, P 2

² God’s meaning waits in the Kingdom, because that is where He placed it. It does not wait in time. It merely rests in the Kingdom because it belongs there, as you do. How can you who are God’s meaning perceive yourself as absent from it? You can see yourself as separated from your meaning only by experiencing yourself as unreal. This is why the ego is insane; it teaches that you are not what you are. That is so contradictory it is clearly impossible. It is therefore a lesson you cannot really learn, and therefore cannot really teach. Yet you are always teaching. You must, therefore, be teaching something else, even though the ego does not know what it is. The ego, then, is always being undone, and does suspect your motives. Your mind cannot be unified in allegiance to the ego, because the mind does not belong to it. Yet what is “treacherous” to the ego is faithful to peace. The ego’s “enemy” is therefore your friend.

Jesus says that I cannot teach what is clearly not true.

Since I am always teaching, I am teaching truth; everything else is an illusion. Because of this, the ego, which I still identify with to some degree, suspects that I am being disloyal to it, and so thinks of me as the enemy. My mind will never unite with my ego because my mind belongs to God.

From reading this, I realize how grateful I am to know that my true self is never going to be lost to the ego self. I am grateful to know that while the ego self is busy teaching ego stuff, that is not me, and I am teaching only truth and doing so all the time. Above all else, I am grateful to know that I belong to God. This paragraph strongly reinforces the truth I am coming to accept: I am not ego and ego does not really exist. I am God’s meaning, residing even now in the Kingdom. I am safe in the knowledge that I am still as God created me.

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