ACIM Chapter 9. I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 11, 12

ACIM Chapter 9. I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 11, 12

I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 11

11 You do not recognize the enormous waste of energy you expend in denying truth. What would you say of someone who persists in attempting the impossible, believing that to achieve it is to succeed? The belief that you must have the impossible in order to be happy is totally at variance with the principle of creation. God could not will that happiness depended on what you could never have. The fact that God is Love does not require belief, but it does require acceptance. It is indeed possible for you to deny facts, although it is impossible for you to change them. If you hold your hands over your eyes, you will not see because you are interfering with the laws of seeing. If you deny love, you will not know it because your cooperation is the law of its being. You cannot change laws you did not make, and the laws of happiness were created for you, not by you.

How is it that I deny the truth and insist that I can be happy only if the truth is not true?

I do this when I desire sickness, when I desire to be unfairly treated, and when I desire to be right at the expense of another. Why would I desire these things when they are so clearly the cause of my unhappiness? And yet I must desire them because they show up as my life.

There was a time when I was angry with someone and spent two days arguing for my anger, insisting that he was wrong and that his actions were hurting me. I was insisting that the only way I could be happy was if he sacrificed his perceived needs on my behalf. It took nearly two days for me to get past this idea, to move my hands from in front of my eyes so that I could see. What a waste of energy that was.

How could my happiness depend on what another person does or does not do? How could my happiness depend on getting my way at the expense of another? And even more unbelievable, how could my happiness depend on what happens in a dream? Would God put my happiness out of my reach? Would he make happiness something elusive, something that is only sometimes possible?

Here is what I discovered when I finally remembered that I wanted to see.

I decided that all of my previous goals that involved a need to have something happen were unimportant compared with the goal of knowing God. I let it all go to the Holy Spirit for purification. He healed my mind as I stopped interfering with love and accepted it. Happiness happened.

The situation itself remained unresolved for a while. The ego mind wanted to revive the issue, and it sometimes called love into question, but I was not interested. I was aware of those thoughts, and when one snagged my attention, I called on Jesus to help me. He is with me and all of us, right in our minds. I asked that the thought be removed from my mind.

The fact that God is Love does not require belief, but it does require acceptance.

This is an interesting sentence. I never thought about it that way before. But this is good news. I don’t have to believe a fact for it to be true, nor do I need to believe this fact for it to help me. It is enough that I accept it. I do accept it because I believe in Jesus and he tells me it is true. That is enough for me.

There is a song I listen to every night as I go to sleep. It repeats over and over the words, “Thank you” and “Your love is pouring down.” As the song repeats these words, I imagine that His love is pouring down on me, washing away the doubts and uncertainties that may have plagued me during the day, healing all that is not truth in my mind. I am filled with gratitude.

I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 12

12 Any attempt to deny what is must be fearful, and if the attempt is strong it will induce panic. Willing against reality, though impossible, can be made into a very persistent goal even though you do not want it. But consider the result of this strange decision. You are devoting your mind to what you do not want. How real can this devotion be? If you do not want it, it was never created. If it were never created, it is nothing. Can you really devote yourself to nothing?

Jesus says that to deny what is must be fearful. When I deny what I am, I deny what is. I was reading the section called “What am I?” in the Daily Lessons section. This is a beautiful section, and I am going to read it frequently now because I am ready to believe it. Among other things, it says that we are the holy messengers of God who speak for Him, and carrying it to everyone He has sent to us, we learn that it is written on our hearts.

It is different when I am looking from the perspective of my split mind.

When I feel afraid or sick, in pain or angry, or when I succumb to guilt and doubt, I deny what is. When I treat anyone badly, I am not being a messenger for God, and thus, I am not learning what is written on my heart. I deny both of us the truth that brings us to the awareness of Heaven. This includes the clerk at the store, the fellow shopper who is blocking the aisle, and the driver who won’t use her turn signal.

In this world of separation with its levels and its orders of difficulty, it seems like some errors are big or important, and other things hardly matter. But that is not so. It is the same error that I feel anger and resentment toward my neighbor, and that consumed me for two days, as it is that I was impatient with the store clerk who was moving slowly and talking to a fellow clerk while I was running late. They are the same thing because the only thing that is happening is that I am either devoted to God or ego, devoted to what is, or devoted to nothing.

These days, I have some very clear opportunities to teach love or to teach fear. Even when I am not actively involved in politics, the way prices are soaring and the uncertainty of the world, many others are, and this can make them anxious. People drive too fast or carelessly because they are devoted to nothing and fearful, even panicked. You can see it in their pinched expressions, worry lines, and tense bodies.

My function is to remember my true devotion.

That is, to be a messenger of God, to teach love, to teach everyone what they are, and to learn what I am. And when I forget, when I get caught up in the illusion, my function is to forgive myself as soon as I notice that I am devoting myself to nothing. When I think of this, I get excited! Today is not just another day at work. It is not just another day navigating the crowds and the heavy traffic. It is a day of remembering and a day of teaching. Today, I am God’s messenger.

I am reading a book that I highly recommend. It is Love Without Conditions by Paul Ferrini. Click Here to check it out.