ACIM Chapter 7. X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, P 5, 6. The Holy Spirit always sides with you and with your strength.
ACIM Chapter 7. X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, P 5, 6
X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, P 5
5 The Holy Spirit always sides with you and with your strength. As long as you avoid His guidance in any way, you want to be weak. Yet weakness is frightening. What else, then, can this decision mean except that you want to be fearful? The Holy Spirit never asks for sacrifice, but the ego always does. When you are confused about this distinction in motivation, it can only be due to projection. Projection is a confusion in motivation, and given this confusion, trust becomes impossible. No one gladly obeys a guide he does not trust, but this does not mean that the guide is untrustworthy. In this case, it always means that the follower is. However, this, too, is merely a matter of his own belief. Believing that he can betray, he believes that everything can betray him. Yet this is only because he has elected to follow false guidance. Unable to follow this guidance without fear, he associates fear with guidance, and refuses to follow any guidance at all. If the result of this decision is confusion, this is hardly surprising.
I can understand why it is that we want to be weak.
We used our strength to do the impossible, and in doing so, we have become convinced that we have attacked God. It seems our strength has betrayed us and left us fearful and guilty. Now we just want to keep our head down. If we think our guilt is noticed, we want to point God toward someone else. Being weak and frightened seems to be a better option than being strong and allowing that strength to lead us into more trouble. It seems that being weak is better than being found out by God.
Since we believe that we betrayed God and, over and over, we betray our brother, we naturally believe everything is betraying us. Certainly, when we follow the ego, we are betrayed. The ego, that little chatterbox in our head, is constantly guiding us to do things that wind up getting us even deeper into trouble. It constantly warns us of trouble and encourages us to defend ourselves.
Here is an example. It is something that happened several years ago.
I wanted to spend more time with my daughter. The ego advised me to be careful about that. It went something like this: She has her own life, and if you impose too much, she will start to avoid you. She is very kind and will spend time with you but will come to resent you. She already has to give time to her father, who is very needy; a good mother wouldn’t add to her burden. If she spends Saturday with her dad and Sunday with you, when will she have any time to herself?
So, I seldom called to ask for her company and she stopped calling me. The ego congratulated me on being strong and independent. Then the ego said that she was selfish and thoughtless for not calling me. The ego said that she didn’t love me or respect me, and that must mean I was not a good mother, and she started reminding me of all the things I did wrong. Then, the ego pointed out that she was ungrateful for all I did for her. It was her fault I felt like this.
At this point, realizing that I had been following an insane guide, I shook off the ego and asked Spirit what I should do. I immediately picked up the phone and started a conversation with my daughter. As it turned out, she was feeling abandoned by me and hurt by this. When I tried to explain my reasoning, she wasn’t going for it. Since then, we have moved past this and now enjoy each other’s company nearly every week.
Here is the thing.
We have been choosing the ego as our guide, and since the ego is an unreliable guide, we have come to distrust all guides. The only reason this whole situation with my daughter did not spin completely out of control is that I have been slowly learning that I can trust the Holy Spirit to be my Guide. When I realized what I was doing and turned to Him for help, He guided me to approach the situation in love rather than from fear. I stopped thinking about how I could defend myself to how I could love my daughter and myself.
Like many other things in life, betrayal is just a thought in the mind. It is a belief, and it is a false belief. It started with the belief we betrayed God when we decided to see what separation would feel like. Once we believed in betrayal, we began to see it everywhere. Betrayal is not real, but we believe it is, and what we believe is real to us. Since we made betrayal, we now must allow it to be undone for us, along with the other things we decided to believe, like guilt, fear, suffering, and death.
Just as I did with the situation with my daughter, we must step out in faith.
We must do this because it is going against the ego belief in fear and guilt. Trust in the Holy Spirit will carry us. He will not betray us. If we will do that, if we will turn to Him for guidance. He will teach us that He is trustworthy and will not lead us astray. He will lead us to let go of our belief in betrayal and all the other lies we learned from listening to our ego. We only have to take the first tentative step toward Him, and He will leap to our assistance! He will prove Himself a good and reliable Guide.
6 X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, P 6
6 The Holy Spirit is perfectly trustworthy, as you are. God Himself trusts you, and therefore your trustworthiness is beyond question. It will always remain beyond question, however much you may question it. I said before that you are the Will of God. His Will is not an idle wish, and your identification with His Will is not optional, since it is what you are. Sharing His Will with me is not really open to choice, though it may seem to be. The whole separation lies in this error. The only way out of the error is to decide that you do not have to decide anything. Everything has been given you by God’s decision. That is His Will, and you cannot undo it.
I feel like a fool as I sit here asking to wake up, trying to align my will with God’s Will. I spend the day looking at false thoughts in my mind and letting go of the belief in guilt, and asking for Christ’s Vision as I interact with my brothers. And all the time, this is done. I am asking for what is already mine. It could not be otherwise because it is the Will of God. My confusion lies in the belief that I have a will separate from the Will of God, that anything could ever exist that is not the Will of God, and that I have somehow undone His Will.
Here is what I think right now.
I keep asking for what I already have and this is the way I convince myself I don’t have it. This is just another ego strategy for keeping the illusion going. I can’t believe I still entertain ego thinking. Especially when even as I do it, I know it can’t be right.
I know that we cannot return our full awareness to the Kingdom with guilt in our mind. I do not doubt this for a moment. But then I turn around and project blame on some hapless person just dreaming their dream. Or I decide I am just so guilty for something I thought or something I did years ago that now I have to be depressed about it. I do this, and at the same time, I know it’s crazy.
When I was a child, I would play at being a princess and while I was doing this, I believed I was that princess. I was so caught up in the story, the world around me ceased to exist. The little girl I was didn’t exist for me. But no matter how long I played this game, and how completely lost in the play I was, nothing changed. No amount of pretending changed who I was. Nor did I have to do anything to restore me to the little girl I was. I just stopped pretending to be something else.
That is all that is happening now.
I am pretending to be something I am not. And now I am pretending I can’t stop, that there is something else I must do to fix this. I know this is the ego mind that resists waking from the dream. I know that I am not lost or condemned. And I know that I do not have a will separate from God.
I know that this separation idea is all done and complete, and always has been. I am not confused. There is nothing for me to decide on, and nothing for me to do other than to accept that there is only God’s Will and I am part of it. We wake up when we stop pretending that we can’t.
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