ACIM Chapter 8. II.The Difference Between Imprisonment and Freedom, P 7, 8. When I said, “All power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His,” this is what I meant.
ACIM Chapter 8. II.The Difference Between Imprisonment and Freedom, P 7, 8
II. The Difference Between Imprisonment and Freedom P 7
7 When I said, “All power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His,” this is what I meant. The Will of God is without limit, and all power and glory lie within it. It is boundless in strength and in love and in peace. It has no boundaries because its extension is unlimited, and it encompasses all things because it created all things. By creating all things, it made them part of itself. You are the Will of God because that is how you were created. Because your Creator creates only like Himself, you are like Him. You are part of Him Who is all power and glory, and are therefore as unlimited as He is.
I am part of God and am, therefore, as unlimited as He is. This is what the Course has been trying to tell me all along. It is helping me accept the truth that I am not what I seem in this experience of separation. The reason it is taking so much work for me to accept this is that there is such a huge difference between what I imagine myself to be and my reality.
I actually talked about this very thing when I wrote in my journal for the Daily Lessons. Lesson 183 says that I can call upon God’s Name because it is my own as well. This is what Jesus is telling us in this paragraph, too. God created me an extension of Himself and so I have what God has. Therefore, since God is all power and glory, I, too have all power and glory.
This morning as I read in the paragraph that I am as unlimited as God, I didn’t feel anything.
Certainly, I understood the words and even the concept. If God created me by extending Himself, then I must be what God is. But there was no feeling for it. I recognized that I was reading this from the perspective of the split mind. All the split mind knows about me is that I am a body and it cannot comprehend myself as powerful and glorious.
So, I asked Jesus to help me shift my awareness to the mind that knows what I am. Here is something that I read in Chapter 21.
³For God wills not apart from him, nor does the Will of God wait upon time to be accomplished. ⁴Therefore, what joined the Will of God must be in you now, being eternal. ⁵You must have set aside a place in which the Holy Spirit can abide, and where He is. (ACIM, T-21.V.5:3-5)
That is where I placed my focus. I set aside a place in which the Holy Spirit could abide and where He is right now. This is where I found the power and the glory.
II. The Difference Between Imprisonment and Freedom P 8
8 To what else except all power and glory can the Holy Spirit appeal to restore God’s Kingdom? His appeal, then, is merely to what the Kingdom is, and for its own acknowledgement of what it is. When you acknowledge this you bring the acknowledgement automatically to everyone, because you have acknowledged everyone. By your recognition you awaken theirs, and through theirs yours is extended. Awakening runs easily and gladly through the Kingdom, in answer to the Call for God. This is the natural response of every Son of God to the Voice for his Creator, because It is the Voice for his creations and for his own extension.
The Holy Spirit awakens us through acknowledging the Kingdom of which we are a part, and when we acknowledge this, we bring it to everyone because to acknowledge the Kingdom is to remember that we are everyone and are all part of the Kingdom. This acknowledgment, this remembrance of the truth, is how we wake up.
In preparing the mind for awakening, I notice what is not the Kingdom and let it go. This is what the Course refers to as forgiveness. The awakening comes easily to the mind that the Holy Spirit heals. I ask the Holy Spirit to heal my mind each time I notice ego thinking. I ask him to correct my perception. Because of this, I feel a shift in the way I view things, a change in the beliefs I have held. It feels like the world has changed. But it is the mind that has changed.
This step-by-step process of removing the blocks to my awareness, seems to be necessary.
It readies me to acknowledge what has always been here, what all the little shifts have been pointing to. Then, the world will fall away. I love that Jesus says, “Awakening runs easily and gladly through the Kingdom, in answer to the Call for God.”
It almost never feels hard these days, though it used to. It seemed to occur in fits and starts. Even now, as I have become vigilant and consistent in accepting the atonement, it is hard to understand how this works. Looking at it from the viewpoint of time and space, it is difficult to imagine this ease and gladness and even more difficult to imagine everyone responding to the Call. In a room with 100 random people, I might be the only one who hears this call, I think.
But my vision is narrow, and my understanding very small. I trust that the Holy Spirit is the Atonement and that I need only listen for my call and acknowledge it. My acknowledgment will be the call to everyone. That seems strange to think about, and certainly, looking at the world, I don’t see it happening. But then, Jesus tells us not to look to the world for the truth. We won’t find it there. It is enough that I understand what to do with my part. I don’t need to understand more than that.
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