ACIM Chapter 8. IV. The Gift of Freedom, P 6-8. Nothing God created can oppose your decision, as nothing God created can oppose His Will.
ACIM Chapter 8. IV. The Gift of Freedom, P 6-8
IV. The Gift of Freedom P 6
6 Nothing God created can oppose your decision, as nothing God created can oppose His Will. God gave your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honour of His. If you want to be like me I will help you, knowing that we are alike. If you want to be different, I will wait until you change your mind. I can teach you, but only you can choose to listen to my teaching. How else can it be, if God’s Kingdom is freedom? Freedom cannot be learned by tyranny of any kind, and the perfect equality of all God’s Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one mind over another. God’s Sons are equal in will, all being the Will of their Father. This is the only lesson I came to teach.
Wow! Did you read that last sentence?
“This is the only lesson I came to teach.” I am going to pay close attention to this paragraph. I have always loved the sentence where Jesus assures me that he will help me be like him, and if I want to be different, he will wait for me to change my mind. That has brought me so much comfort. It made me realize that it is inevitable that I will be like Jesus (because we are alike), and he is not going to give up on me. He is just going to wait patiently until I am ready to wake up.
I feel like the only lesson Jesus came to teach is that we are part of God’s Kingdom, and that is our freedom. We are all equal. I am equal to Jesus, and I am equal to the Holy Spirit. How else could it be since we are all equal parts of the one Whole? There will never be a time when we will be coerced by Jesus or by the Holy Spirit because that is just not possible. If it were possible, then I would not be free, and God’s Kingdom would not be free because I am God’s Kingdom.
I have often had the thought that I want someone just to heal me and get it over with. “Jesus, just shake me awake, would you?” But that can’t happen because it would prove that I am not free to wake up on my own. It would make me something I am not. It would make Reality something it is not. Jesus will teach me, but only I can decide if I want to learn.
IV. The Gift of Freedom P 7
7 If your will were not mine it would not be our Father’s. This would mean you have imprisoned yours, and have not let it be free. Of yourself you can do nothing, because of yourself you are nothing. I am nothing without the Father and you are nothing without me, because by denying the Father you deny yourself. I will always remember you, and in my remembrance of you lies your remembrance of yourself. In our remembrance of each other lies our remembrance of God. And in this remembrance lies your freedom because your freedom is in Him. Join, then, with me in praise of Him and you whom He created. This is our gift of gratitude to Him, which He will share with all His creations, to whom He gives equally whatever is acceptable to Him. Because it is acceptable to Him it is the gift of freedom, which is His Will for all His Sons. By offering freedom you will be free.
I don’t think I have ever really understood the concept of free will.
At first, I thought it was some kind of boon that I was free to decide between unlimited options, even though I didn’t understand the far-reaching consequences. I was like a child let loose in place with many sharp objects among the toys.
As I began to understand how little I know and how much I have hurt myself in the past with my choosing, and as I began to understand that exercising my “free will” was keeping me in hell, I became afraid of it. “You decide for me, God,” was not a prayer of thanksgiving as it should have been, but a prayer of fear, asking to be relieved of free will because I didn’t know how to use it.
Now, I am beginning to understand that what I thought of as free will was my will imprisoned. When I imagined I could will for something outside God, I entangled my will with idle wishes that hurt me. Could it be freedom to be separate from my true nature, to be separate from absolute and unending peace and joy? Is it freedom to be separate from unlimited strength and power? Is it freedom to be fragile and weak and to suffer and die?
Now I seek true freedom as I disentangle my mind from the separation idea.
I ask frequently, “What am I?” Slowly, my mind is opening to the reality of my being. And I am being revealed to myself. I have periods of time when I almost know what it is to be spirit rather than body, to be one rather than separate. I feel like Jesus is my beloved brother, and gratitude overcomes me as I think of that. And I feel joined with all my brothers, and they feel precious to me. My will is free to remember what we all are to each other, and so to remember God.
Then, the ego mind tries to reassert itself, and I sink back into the story I made up. This is very uncomfortable because, in those times when I am tasting my freedom, I am exhilarated. I am so much closer to knowing my free will, then I am back into ego, and I think I am Myron. It is starting to feel claustrophobic. Maybe I am reaching the tipping point, and soon, I will know what it means to be completely free.
IV. The Gift of Freedom P 8
8 Freedom is the only gift you can offer to God’s Sons, being an acknowledgement of what they are and what He is. Freedom is creation, because it is love. Whom you seek to imprison you do not love. Therefore, when you seek to imprison anyone, including yourself, you do not love him and you cannot identify with him. When you imprison yourself you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. Your identification is with the Father and with the Son. It cannot be with one and not the other. If you are part of one you must be part of the other, because they are one. The Holy Trinity is holy because It is One. If you exclude yourself from this union, you are perceiving the Holy Trinity as separated. You must be included in It, because It is everything. Unless you take your place in It and fulfil your function as part of It, the Holy Trinity is as bereft as you are. No part of It can be imprisoned if Its truth is to be known.
When I think of freedom, I think of being free of the belief in me.
I am not this body of Myron, and as long as I believe that is what I am, I will feel imprisoned, and I will imprison others in their body/personality. I imprison myself when I judge my actions and think my actions define me. Last night, I was thinking about this and asked the Holy Spirit to help me detach from this story and see it as the illusion it is.
This story of Myron is an excellent opportunity to learn what it is I came to learn. It can be painless if I remember that I am not the story. When I think about something I did, that was unkind, and I feel ashamed, it is because I believe I am my actions. I don’t have to suffer shame and will not suffer shame if I detach from the story.
One time, when I was a young woman, my mom called to tell me she had burnt herself badly. I hardly reacted to her story at all because, though she didn’t know it, I was really high on some drug or another. For a long time, when I thought of it, I would feel awful about it. My mom was always there for me, and so many times, I was absent from her when she needed me. When I thought about it, I felt ashamed and regretful. I cried and wished I had behaved better.
There was a lesson in this story of Myron.
But the self-imposed guilt that I continued to harbor for a long time prevented me from accepting my true self. The guilt tied me to the idea of Myron, and I couldn’t experience the brilliance of the Self that I was and am. If I cannot see past the guilt in my mind to the truth of my being, then I will not be able to do so for others either. And it works the other way as well. If I refuse to look past the guilt I see in others, I will not be able to see them as they are, nor will I be able to see my Self.
I wanted desperately for my mom to be here so that I could hold her and tell her how sorry I was for all the times I failed to be the daughter she needed. I wanted her forgiveness. But really, I needed to forgive myself. No doubt she forgave me the instant it happened, just as I forgive my own children everything. But I was so attached to “Myron” and her story that I couldn’t forgive myself. I thought I was that person who failed to love at that moment. And that was painful to think about.
We need to detach from the story.
As long as we continue to see ourselves as the characters we play in the story and fail to know that we are the watchers of the stories, we will suffer, and we will block the vision of ourselves as one with God. We are part of the Holy Trinity. We are the Son. That is our truth, so we cannot be the person we are playing in our story.
Since I am not really Myron, then there is no reason to feel guilty about anything that happened in the story of Myron and Mom. If I am not really Myron, then Mom was not really Mom either. We were just both dreaming of separation and watching it play out on the screen of our minds. There was a lesson to be learned, but it was not a lesson in guilt. Quite the opposite. I have since released myself from the prison of that guilt. Now, I know how to take my proper place in the Holy Trinity and remember what I am. It is bereft without me.
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