ACIM Chapter 8. VI.The Treasure of God, P 1, 2. We are the joint will of the Sonship, whose Wholeness is for all.
ACIM Chapter 8. VI.The Treasure of God, P 1, 2
VI. The Treasure of God
1 We are the joint will of the Sonship, whose Wholeness is for all. We begin the journey back by setting out together, and gather in our brothers as we continue together. Every gain in our strength is offered for all, so they too can lay aside their weakness and add their strength to us. God’s welcome waits for us all, and He will welcome us as I am welcoming you. Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer.
We are in this together.
We are joining with Jesus, and we are waking up. As we go along, we gather more and more of us. We do this through our words and our actions. And it happens even without words and actions; it happens as we heal our minds. My mind is healed, and so the mind we share is healed, and every part of the mind experiences the healing. How extraordinary that we have this astonishing purpose. I would never have guessed it, judging from my life before A Course in Miracles, and I am filled with gratitude to know it now.
We cannot always see this in the world, but it is happening.
I touch people I have never even met and probably never will. I affect the lives of people I see every day. It might seem like a small thing to me, a smile or kind word, but someone is changed because of it. Then there are the ones who are touching greater numbers of people, the celebrities like Oprah and Jim Carey, who influence thousands of people. Social media has become an important platform for this gathering, spreading the word faster and farther than ever could have happened before.
Every contribution, small and large, adds strength to all of us. We are truly in this together in every sense of the word. We are waking up, and in the process, we are helping others to wake up until finally we are awakened as one. This is no small thing. In fact, it is the only thing that matters.
I look like I am working, visiting friends, helping people, writing, keeping my body reasonably healthy, and shopping. I have a story about all of this, but all the while I use these things, these activities, as a way to wake us all up. Even when I get so involved in them that I start to think they are goals within themselves, I pull my mind back to what matters.
Occasionally, I start to think my job is how I provide for myself.
When this happens, I might believe that I have to defend it against others who would take it from me. Then I laugh because I remember that my job is just a backdrop for my real goal. I ask the Holy Spirit to help me remember the truth, to remember my true purpose. I teach a class or write an article, and I notice how others are doing it and think I’m not doing it as well. So, I wonder if I could try to do it the way they do. Then I come back to my senses. How I teach or write is not important. And what I say is not up to me. I step back and let the Holy Spirit decide for me in each situation.
I think I want to do something, and then, again, I remember that I will not make any decisions on my own. Instead, I ask for guidance, and the mind is healed of an old belief. All those who are ready to accept that healing are healed with me. It is in little ways like this the mind is healed. It is like a tiny earthquake in the mind, a little tremor that passes through, and everyone feels it and is affected by it in some way. Did I ever think there was me, and then there was you? Did I see someone else and really believe they were someone else?
I am learning to use the world to let go of the world
The world seems to be filled with interesting and sometimes fun distractions. It sometimes seems the world is a very serious place that needs my constant attention. But the world is nothing. I won’t get confused about that again. Nothing about the world is important other than how I can use it to show me what yet needs to be healed in the mind so I can choose the healing.
In the meantime, I will continue to do the things that I must do. I will work, but I will use work to help us wake up. I will take care of the body, but I will use the body to help us wake up. And I will write and teach but will not use it to glorify the ego. Jesus has welcomed us to this journey, and God welcomes us home. I will not tarry for anything in the world.
VI. The Treasure of God
2 The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true. I am come to tell you that the choice of which is true is not yours to make. If it were, you would have destroyed yourself. Yet God did not will the destruction of His creations, having created them for eternity. His Will has saved you, not from yourself but from your illusion of yourself. He has saved you for yourself.
We don’t get to decide what is true.
I looked up the word, behold, and a synonym is to witness or watch. And that is our true purpose here. We can accept what we experience with the body’s senses as true and go along with the play as if it mattered. This option will keep us from knowing God. Or we can accept that Jesus is right and this is an illusion and choose to learn from it from the observer’s point of view.
So, we can accept ourselves as the Sons of God, and all that implies. Or we can accept the ego version of ourselves as the real self. It is up to each of us. Those are the only two choices we have; the one we choose will not change anything God created but will determine our experience. What we cannot do is decide which is true.
How do we stop beholding the world and instead know the truth?
We behold the world when we see guilt and believe it is true. We remember the truth when we ask what is true and accept the Atonement for what is not true. When we are afraid, feel confused, alone, or unhappy, this is witnessing the world we see with the body’s eyes and believing what we see is the truth. We stop perceiving the world as real when we recognize the error and ask that our minds be healed. Then what we “see” will be different.
The circumstances may or may not change, but our perception of them will change. For instance, I used to think that when my grown children didn’t call me or come to see me, it was because they didn’t love me. I thought they judged me for not being a very good mother and that they held my mistakes against me. I would feel sad, lonely, and hopeless because I couldn’t imagine how to fix this. Every problem they had seemed to be my fault because I had not done a better job raising them. I constantly looked for reassurance from them that they loved and forgave me.
Slowly, my mind was healed over time and I began to see things differently. When they fail to call or come see me, I assume they are busy living their lives and that makes me happy. I have forgiven myself, so I no longer see their actions as condemnation. I don’t feel guilty, so I don’t perceive their words as proof of my guilt. When I notice I miss them, I call or invite them over. If they are busy, then I do something else. It is the same circumstance, but my experience of it is completely different. And I am closer to remembering God.
Before, when I believed in my guilt, I saw the world the ego made, which was painful.
Now that more guilt has been removed from my mind, I see the love that was there all the time. I see more of the real world than I did before. I guess you could say that the veil is thinner now. Now, I see the ego world with my eyes, but I also see through it to the truth. What if they really did hold my mistakes against me and resented me? I could still see through their behavior to the truth if I chose to.
When someone lives an ego belief in blame and guilt, they are suffering. They are suffering because they are confused and cannot see that they are loved. If my kids blamed me and thought I was the cause of their unhappiness, I could see it as if they were punishing me, or I could see it as the call for love it is. This is all just a story, and when the soul sheds the body, it sheds the story as well. Behind the story are beautiful souls. We are not really against each other but for each other. We are living the life that will help us all wake up, and that is all that is happening here.
The perception that leaves me feeling bereft of love and guilty for my mistakes is beholding the world. The perception that leaves me feeling grateful and compassionate is beholding the truth. When I behold the world, I lose sight of God. When I believe in the world of the ego, I believe that God is like the ego, and so I no longer know God. But God didn’t change, and He didn’t go anywhere. As my mind heals and I see the real world more clearly, I also draw closer to God. And when we give up the world altogether, we will know God.
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