ACIM Chapter 7.V. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind P 10, 11. You cannot forget the Father because I am with you, and I cannot forget Him.

V. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind, P 10

10 You cannot forget the Father because I am with you, and I cannot forget Him. To forget me is to forget yourself and Him Who created you. Our brothers are forgetful. That is why they need your remembrance of me and of Him Who created me. Through this remembrance, you can change their minds about themselves, as I can change yours. Your mind is so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours. I do not want to share my body in communion because this is to share nothing. Would I try to share an illusion with the most holy children of a most holy Father? Yet I do want to share my mind with you because we are of one Mind, and that Mind is ours. See only this Mind everywhere, because only this is everywhere and in everything. It is everything because it encompasses all things within itself. Blessed are you who perceive only this, because you perceive only what is true.

“Your mind is so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours.”

By this time in the Text and the Daily Lessons, it should be obvious that my true mind is powerful. I am spirit, not body, and my mind is part of the Mind that is one with all. I live in God. Now Jesus is reminding me again that my mind is powerful, so powerful in fact that I can enlighten others as he enlightens me.

The way this seems to work is that as I allow my mind to be healed, I begin to remember who I am, and so I remember who my brother is. My remembrance becomes their remembrance. My mind is illuminated, and so I illuminate my brother. Jesus is helping me change my mind about myself, and I help my brother change his mind about himself by knowing the truth about him.

I am beginning to remember that I am not the body, and the world I see does not exist. I am mind within Mind, and all that exists is encompassed within this Mind. As I turn my attention from ego and disregard all things ego, the only thing left to see in myself and in my brother is our holiness. Would I hold onto his ego, choose to believe in his errors rather than to know him as he is? Because if I do, I throw away my remembrance of my Self as well.

V. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind, P 11

11 Come therefore unto me, and learn of the truth in you. The mind we share is shared by all our brothers, and as we see them truly they will be healed. Let your mind shine with mine upon their minds, and by our gratitude to them make them aware of the light in them. This light will shine back upon you and on the whole Sonship, because this is your proper gift to God. He will accept it and give it to the Sonship, because it is acceptable to Him and therefore to His Sons. This is true communion with the Holy Spirit, Who sees the altar of God in everyone, and by bringing it to your appreciation, He calls upon you to love God and His creation. You can appreciate the Sonship only as one. This is part of the law of creation, and therefore governs all thought.

 

It’s all very simple.

How do we wake up? How do we remember who we are? We want to return our minds to God. So, we let go of our judgments about everyone and everything. Just let that piece of fiction go. There’s nothing to it, anyway. Instead, look where the Holy Spirit directs us. He sees only the altar of God in everyone. Imagine that! Imagine that everywhere you look, you see only God! It’s easy because that is all there is to see.

Imagine the beauty of it! Everywhere you look, you see perfection, holiness, and love. You feel lovable and loved, and loneliness is a fading memory, never to be experienced again. How could you be lonely when you share the same mind with all brothers and sisters, with an entire Sonship, and that mind is in God? You can never be misunderstood because communication is perfectly clear and flawless, with no gap between you to distort or disrupt communication. Look all around, and you will see only us, our one glorious Self, living in perfect harmony, safe and happy.

As I consider this vision of heaven, which is mine for the taking, I also consider the alternative, which I still sometimes choose. Here is something from when I was still working.  I was preparing a plan for a customer, and it was my first time doing it. I was worried about getting it right, so I was uneasy. In the middle of this, I was interrupted and given another task. I felt anger rush through me and snapped at my boss. That hadn’t happened in so long that I was shocked by my reaction, as probably was my boss.

I took care of the extra job, and as I did so, sanity slowly returned.

I watched myself react and feel resentment, project blame, and all the ego stuff we do when we think we are separate from each other and have different agendas, that conflict. Someone will win, and someone must lose. Jeez, in the snap of a finger, I’m back in hell, just like that. Would I be so willing to relinquish the Kingdom just to keep my little piece of hell safe from interlopers? If I think of my brother as an interruption in my day, then I guess the answer was yes, at least in that moment of insanity.

As I wrote this, I envisioned my mother slipping quietly into my room to comfort me. I had a really bad sunburn and was in pain. Pain to a little child is very scary, and I wanted her there with me, reassuring me and making me feel better, but she couldn’t stay. My dad thought she was babying me and told her not to make a big deal of it. She had to leave me.

As I thought of this moment, I felt a surge of rage, the same rage that had been silently eating away at me for all these years. The rage was directed at my father for not caring about me and at my mom for giving in to his demands, and this rage was like wildfire in dry brush. It spread over the terrain of my life, touching all the men I had been in a relationship with. All were burned with the same fire because that pain had never been looked at or forgiven. I had no idea that grievance was lurking in my mind and had caused so much damage.

The ego wants to fan that fire.

It wants to feel sorry and sad and unloved because of it. But Spirit shows it to me so I can let it go into His hands and be healed. My dad had an agenda. He thought it was his job to toughen up his kids so they could face life. My mom thought her job was to comfort and protect her children from pain. I thought my job was to find someone to make me feel safe and cared for. But really, we all had the same agenda. Love is what we all want. We just didn’t know how.

Because there is no time and only one mind, and we are all in it, and because space and even death are illusions, I am being given the opportunity to heal this old wound right now this morning with all of you as witnesses. I can hold onto the resentment and unfairness of it all and feel vindicated in my anger, or I can relinquish that illusion and embrace our oneness.

Holy Spirit, I have no use for the ego. It is not me. Please show me God’s Altar in my dad, my mom, and myself. I want only to awaken to the love that we are. Show me the place where we are one.

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