ACIM Chapter 8. III.The Holy Encounter, P 6-8. The Kingdom cannot be found alone, and you who are the Kingdom cannot find yourself alone.
ACIM Chapter 8. III.The Holy Encounter, P 6-8
III. The Holy Encounter, P 6
6 The Kingdom cannot be found alone, and you who are the Kingdom cannot find yourself alone. To achieve the goal of the curriculum, then, you cannot listen to the ego, whose purpose is to defeat its own goal. The ego does not know this, because it does not know anything. But you can know it, and you will know it if you are willing to look at what the ego would make of you. This is your responsibility, because once you have really looked at it you will accept the Atonement for yourself. What other choice could you make? Having made this choice you will understand why you once believed that, when you met someone else, you thought he was someone else. And every holy encounter in which you enter fully will teach you this is not so.
Two very important ideas got my attention in this paragraph. The first is that to achieve the goal of the curriculum, I cannot listen to the ego because the ego doesn’t know anything. It is my responsibility to look at what the ego would make of me and accept the Atonement for myself instead. I am convinced of this, having done just that for a long time now.
I continue to be vigilant for the thoughts and beliefs that the ego mind offers.
As I pay attention to my feelings and my actions and words, I become aware of what they tell me about my beliefs. It is easy to mistake understanding a concept for healing. I can say all the right words, and I can understand intellectually and even accept intellectually what A Course in Miracles is teaching me. However, unless I am living them, they are just information.
How do I know if I am living what I am learning? I just look at my life. How do I feel? Am I peaceful and happy? If not, then I need to pay closer attention. I need to become aware of what thought I am accepting as true that is really an ego thought and then accept the Atonement for that mistake. In accepting the Atonement, I am asking the Holy Spirit to remove from my mind the thought that is not in alignment with the truth. It is another way of saying I forgive it.
The second thing that caught my attention was the sentence:
Having made this choice you will understand why you once believed that, when you met someone else, you thought he was someone else.
First, Jesus very clearly states that we are not separate. The lady who took my breakfast order this morning is not someone else. She is part of my own Self. The body she is employing for this separation story is designed to keep the secret that she is me, but I am not fooled. At least I am not fooled right now.
We are not truly separate, just as we are not truly the body device we use in this story of separate beings having separate experiences. I say that I am not fooled right now because I am sitting alone in my home, listening to the Holy Spirit, feeling His closeness, and remembering what I am. Then I leave the house, and I meet many people coming and going during the day, and I get caught up in the story, and maybe I will forget my unity with all that is.
But I never completely forget anymore.
During the day, I will suddenly remember, as I speak to a store clerk, that we are not separate. Or I will catch a glance of someone on the street, and I will remember the truth for that instant. Or driving alone in my car, I will know for that brief time that I am not really alone and never could be.
Oh, to know this as my experience all the time! To never forget! To never be confused again! This is why I study A Course in Miracles, why I commune with Spirit, and why I am vigilant for every thought that would take me from my goal. I want to feel the perfect peace, the absolute joy of knowing what we are. I can peek behind the veil and experience this joining, at least to some extent, as I allow it to happen in each holy encounter. Today, I would enter fully into each holy encounter so that I can have the full experience of our oneness. I ask for help to remember my purpose.
III. The Holy Encounter, P 7
7 You can encounter only part of yourself because you are part of God, Who is everything. His power and glory are everywhere, and you cannot be excluded from them. The ego teaches that your strength is in you alone. The Holy Spirit teaches that all strength is in God and therefore in you. God wills no one suffer. He does not will anyone to suffer for a wrong decision, including you. That is why He has given you the means for undoing it. Through His power and glory all your wrong decisions are undone completely, releasing you and your brother from every imprisoning thought any part of the Sonship holds. Wrong decisions have no power, because they are not true. The imprisonment they seem to produce is no more true than they are.
In choosing separation we made a wrong decision, but God does not will that we suffer for it. He only wants our happiness, so he has given us the means to correct our errors. This original error is repeated over and over in our lives, appearing in different forms, but it is all the same error.
The ego is always trying to find ways to correct my errors.
Either that, or to project them onto others in an attempt to make me feel safer, but I am not meant to correct my errors alone because I am not alone. That is just another mistake. I have been given a Corrector, and the way to make use of that gift is to turn my guilty thoughts over to Him to be undone.
I made mistakes when I was raising my children, and for a long time, I suffered from those errors. But then I learned that I have a Holy Spirit that undoes this error and ends my suffering. When I have guilt thoughts about parenting, I remember that God does not will I suffer for that error, and I ask the Holy Spirit to remove from my mind the belief that I am forever imprisoned by a wrong decision. As He undoes my decision, I am released me from my fear
I made mistakes in my relationships and mistakes as a teacher of God. I made wrong decisions many times, and all these wrong decisions were a reflection of the decision for separation. But none of these decisions, not the original error or any of the reflective errors is real, and so they have no real power and are easily undone by One Who was created for that purpose. As I allow the Holy Spirit to undo these wrong decisions that I seem to make daily, I am allowing Him to correct the original error and free us all from our belief in guilt.
III. The Holy Encounter, P 8
8 Power and glory belong to God alone. So do you. God gives whatever belongs to Him because He gives of Himself, and everything belongs to Him. Giving of yourself is the function He gave you. Fulfilling it perfectly will let you remember what you have of Him, and by this you will remember also what you are in Him. You cannot be powerless to do this, because this is your power. Glory is God’s gift to you, because that is what He is. See this glory everywhere to remember what you are.
Power and glory belong to God, and so do I. I belong to God. I love to think that I belong to God. Because it is His nature to create by giving Himself, He gave me everything that belongs to Him, and it is my function to do the same because it is the function He gave me. In fulfilling my function, I will know what I have and what I am. It won’t be just words and concepts but will be what I know. In addition, I am told that I am not powerless to do this because He also gave me His power.
Finally, I am told that Glory is God’s gift to me.
But I must see this glory everywhere to remember what I am. I restated everything in this paragraph because I wanted to be sure I understood it. At first, it was hard for me to get what Jesus was telling me. He seems to be telling me that God creates by giving all of Himself to His creations and that I am to do that as well. I think the reason I had trouble understanding at first is that I was thinking of myself as the ego self as if he were talking to Myron, the character in my story.
The ego personality cannot imagine what to do with those words. It has no idea how to give all of itself. Giving even a bit of itself often seems like a burden, and generally, it gives only because it expects something in return. However, as I realized that this was not instructions to the ego but to my true self, it began to make sense. I don’t remember what this feels like, but the memory is in my mind somewhere so that I can retrieve it. I can find that memory as I let go of the little self I made to take the place of my true self. Jesus reminds me of my power and glory, and this is something else I don’t remember, but it is an incentive to do the work necessary to reach the truth in my mind.
First, I know I have the power to do so, and I want to know my glory.
I am also given a clue as to how to begin this search. I am to look for the glory everywhere because if it is anywhere, it is everywhere. It is not just in some people or in special places but everywhere. I put this into practice in very simple and practical ways.
When I see that I am looking with my ego at another ego, I remember that this can’t be right, and I ask that the Holy Spirit correct my perception. I ask to see the glory that is right before me. And I ask for vision and make no exceptions. I leave no one out. I don’t tilt my head at just the right angle, squint my eyes and hold my tongue just right. Smile. In other words, I don’t try to see glory through these eyes the ego made.
I simply request that the glory that is of God be revealed to me. I give my willingness to see it. This must work because I am simply following the instructions I have been given and because I have been given the power to do this. Actually, I know this works because I have experienced it. Now, I am willing to see as God sees. I open my heart to this. I am willing to put aside all other goals the ego has offered me.
So, what does this have to do with the holy encounter?
I understand now that it is the holy encounter. As I encounter a brother and choose to disregard his appearance, I truly see him. I see into him. And the glory I see there is reflected back to me as I realize that he is the mirror in which I see myself. It is an amazing thing to glimpse my holiness in this way, and it is the reason I am willing to accept this as my function. And this is the reason I am willing to look into everyone rather than looking at them.
The web pages went down earlier today and people were trying to register for the Quantum Counseling program and couldn’t get in. So, we’ve extended the deadline for the early-bird to midnight pacific time on Saturday, February 3rd. My 2 hour session will be on April 2nd at 1:00 Eastern. It will be recorded in case the time doesn’t work for you. To learn more and sign up, CLICK HERE.
Counseling from an ACIM perspective is a quantum kind of counseling.
When we apply the principles of ACIM we’re able to have realizations of truth that provide a quantum leap in consciousness. It’s that Holy Instant of healing that is truly miraculous.
This program, with 16 A Course in Miracles teachers who’ve been counseling people 1 on 1 for years, is for anyone who is interested in doing a deep dive into what healing at the level of the mind means, and what it looks like in a practical experiential way.
Your understanding of ACIM will become so much clearer. In this Quantum Counseling Program, we’ll share what we’ve learned about working with ego identification and how we change our mind in order to go the other way.
This is perfect for someone who would like to have a much greater
understanding of how to apply these ACIM principles in order to
experience transformation. It’s also perfect for anyone who’s interested in counseling or working with clients in a coaching environment.
Being a counselor and a coach for all these years has taught me so much and that’s what I’ll be sharing in this Quantum Counseling program with 16 ACIM teachers coming up in just about a week. The early-bird ends on Saturday, February 3rd at midnight pacific.