ACIM Chapter 7.VI. From Vigilance to Peace, P 5-7. The ego therefore opposes all appreciation, all recognition, all sane perception and all knowledge.
ACIM Chapter 7. VI. From Vigilance to Peace, P 5-7
VI. From Vigilance to Peace, P 5
5 The ego therefore opposes all appreciation, all recognition, all sane perception and all knowledge. It perceives their threat as total, because it senses that all commitments the mind makes are total. Forced, therefore, to detach itself from you, it is willing to attach itself to anything else. But there is nothing else. The mind can, however, make up illusions, and if it does so it will believe in them, because that is how it made them.
Oh my, how we got into this mess is becoming clearer, this entanglement with illusions. We made the ego as a separation idea, which is opposite to everything true and real. It is in opposition to what we are, and so it must detach itself from us. So where does it go? It makes up someplace to go. It makes up illusions, bodies, and stories with lots of drama to hold our attention. And I love how Jesus explains why this works: “The mind can, however, make up illusions, and if it does so it will believe in them, because that is how it made them.”
We did such a good job making these illusions.
Of course, we did; we are God’s Son. As a result, we have confused ourselves. We made them from belief, and now we believe them. So, when a story unfolds and holds our attention, we have a hard time remembering that it is only an illusion and has nothing to do with us other than to make more illusions for our entertainment.
But dang, it sure seems real. And if it is real, we are guilty and in danger. Luckily, only part of the mind has been driven mad by its insane beliefs, and there is a way out of our illusory experience. The Holy Spirit is the answer to our predicament, and the Holy Spirit is in our mind, right next to the problem. Handy, right?
VI. From Vigilance to Peace, P 6
6 The Holy Spirit undoes illusions without attacking them, because He cannot perceive them at all. They therefore do not exist for Him. He resolves the apparent conflict they engender by perceiving conflict as meaningless. I have said before that the Holy Spirit perceives the conflict exactly as it is, and it is meaningless. The Holy Spirit does not want you to understand conflict; He wants you to realize that, because conflict is meaningless, it is not understandable. As I have already said, understanding brings appreciation and appreciation brings love. Nothing else can be understood, because nothing else is real and therefore nothing else has meaning.
When I feel attached to an illusion, it is because I have asked the ego what it means. For instance, if I am worried about my child being upset, the ego will try to explain the upset and give me advice on how to solve their problem. It will find someone or some incident from the past to blame. If I ask the Holy Spirit for help, I am reminded of the truth: the problem is an illusion and, therefore, meaningless. And thus, it doesn’t need to be understood.
This doesn’t mean that I am without compassion for the one who is suffering from their belief in the illusion.
I certainly know how that feels and how confusing it can be. It just means that I don’t have to join them in their pain and confusion. I can remain above the battleground and so see more clearly. I know that the story is an illusion, and while in time, there may be decisions to be made, who we really are is perfectly safe no matter what seems to be happening here.
Because I stay detached from the illusory problem, I can be helpful if help is needed. But more importantly, my peaceful presence offers a true option to conflict. A peaceful reaction to conflict is possible when we recognize it is meaningless and this is all we need to understand. This understanding brings appreciation, and appreciation brings love. Nothing else is real, and therefore, nothing else has meaning.
VI. From Vigilance to Peace, P 7
7 If you will keep in mind what the Holy Spirit offers you, you cannot be vigilant for anything but God and His Kingdom. The only reason you may find this hard to accept is because you may still think there is something else. Belief does not require vigilance unless it is conflicted. If it is, there are conflicting components within it that have led to a state of war, and vigilance has therefore become essential. Vigilance has no place in peace. It is necessary against beliefs that are not true, and would never have been called upon by the Holy Spirit if you had not believed the untrue. When you believe something, you have made it true for you. When you believe what God does not know, your thought seems to contradict His, and this makes it appear as if you are attacking Him.
This is what really stands out to me this morning.
“When you believe something, you have made it true for you.”
Jesus has made it clear to us that the life we think we are living is just a dream, an illusion, and it has no real effects. In other words, we cannot affect reality. We cannot change creation or make God something that He is not. We cannot make ourselves something He did not create. So, ultimately, our beliefs and actions are meaningless. However, what we believe is true for us, so in time, we are suffering because of our beliefs. We are holding ourselves apart from God because of our beliefs.
The second thing that stands out for me is this.
“When you believe what God does not know, your thought seems to contradict His, and this makes it appear as if you are attacking Him.”
This is the source of our fear and guilt. We think that we are attacking God through holding beliefs that are in opposition to His nature. The solution is to be vigilant for signs that we are believing what is not in alignment with Truth and to ask the Holy Spirit to undo this belief for us. We will not always have to do this because one day, we will have allowed healing of these separate thoughts often enough to realize that they are all the same. This transfer of learning allows healing of the one thought that we are separated from God. Once that is healed, we will be at peace.
In the meantime, I am vigilant for my thoughts and my emotions.
I notice when they are not the thoughts I think with God. I realize that I am willing to be corrected and accept the healing of my mind. So simple. It is helpful in this process if I disregard appearances. What appears to have substance, my body, and all I see with the body’s eyes is just a projection of the beliefs in my mind. I will notice when I take them for fact and remember that they are meaningless. Instead, the Holy Spirit will use them to show me what needs healing in my mind and then heal it for me.
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