ACIM Chapter 9. IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness P 9-12

ACIM Chapter 9. IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness P 9-12

IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness, P 9

9 The ego literally lives on borrowed time, and its days are numbered. Do not fear the Last Judgment, but welcome it and do not wait, for the ego’s time is “borrowed” from your eternity. This is the Second Coming that was made for you as the First was created. The Second Coming is merely the return of sense. Can this possibly be fearful?

I am ready for the last judgment, or at least I am ready to be ready. This is why I pay attention to my thoughts and to the world I have brought into manifestation. I want to see what it is that I still value in the world and what it is in my mind that still needs to be healed. I am slowly forgiving myself for my projections, and in doing so, I am releasing this tight grip I have on guilt. This is what I mean when I say I accept the Atonement in a situation. I want to allow the belief in guilt to be removed from my mind, at least in a particular case, so that I can come that much closer to releasing the belief in guilt altogether, as that is my real goal.

This will prepare me for the Last Judgment.

I need the preparation because as long as I still see myself as guilty, I will be afraid of it. In doing this, I am learning that the Holy Spirit could only judge me as innocent because, despite my fear and in spite of appearances, I am innocent. There is nothing I can imagine that will change His judgment of me. In forgiving myself, I am not doing it so that I can stand spotless before God. I am already spotless. I am forgiving myself of the belief that I need forgiveness. If I cannot see my own innocence, I cannot see myself standing before Innocence and will continue to put off the Last Judgment.

IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness, P 10

10 What can be fearful but fantasy, and who turns to fantasy unless he despairs of finding satisfaction in reality? Yet it is certain that you will never find satisfaction in fantasy, so that your only hope is to change your mind about reality. Only if the decision that reality is fearful is wrong can God be right. And I assure you that God is right. Be glad, then, that you have been wrong, but this was only because you did not know who you were. Had you known, you could no more have been wrong than God can.

We have it all wrong, don’t we? We think that the world is real and that our eyes see. And we think that we are safe here. Sure, we have to dedicate much of our lives to defending this safety, but we have convinced ourselves that this is all there is, and so we do what we feel we have to do. We think that if we just keep working at it, we will find the perfect job, the perfect partner, the perfect circumstances and then we will be happy and satisfied.

If you have lived past 70 as I have, you have probably figured out that you are not ever going to be consistently happy and at peace here. And in those moments when you are happy and peaceful, you have probably noticed this little voice, this little warning mechanism at the back of your mind. It keeps us from enjoying what we have as it warns of impending danger. Everything great right now? Well, pretty soon, something is going to happen to undo that happiness, the voice warns.

And that’s not all.

Deep down, where we don’t normally acknowledge even knowing about it, the voice warns us against God. It says that even though this is not paradise (from which God evicted us, by the way), it is far better that we stay here. It is not so scary as facing an angry God would be. And it lowers the fear a little as it offers ways to appease God, but the fear is still there. How do I know it is still there? Because I dream that I am still here.

Jesus tells us that the ego is wrong and is not even real. He says that God loves us and holds nothing against us. Jesus tells us that we are still innocent, and nothing that seems to happen in this dream can change that. He understands the temptation to believe the ego story because he faced the same temptation. But having come through that fear, he wants us to know that the only things we lose when we give up the ego are pain, suffering, and death.

So, the only real question is, can I look past the fear that I am not even consciously aware of and believe that God is Love? Love cannot be vengeful, hateful, or angry, or it would not be Love. The ego has made a ridiculous argument for separation to continue, and I have come to doubt its veracity. Is the illusion real, and God false? Is the illusion safe, or is God safe? I am ready to wake up to God. I ask for Divine Help as I lay aside what I have always believed to be true, and I ask for assistance as I release the fear of God that still remains in my mind.

IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness, P 11

11 The impossible can happen only in fantasy. When you search for reality in fantasies you will not find it. The symbols of fantasy are of the ego, and of these you will find many. But do not look for meaning in them. They have no more meaning than the fantasies into which they are woven. Fairy tales can be pleasant or fearful, but no one calls them true. Children may believe them, and so, for a while, the tales are true for them. Yet when reality dawns, the fantasies are gone. Reality has not gone in the meanwhile. The Second Coming is the awareness of reality, not its return.

It can be hard to remember that this experience we are having is a fantasy, an illusion, a dream. It is especially hard to believe this when things are going badly. When we are afraid it can be difficult to pull the mind away from the story long enough to allow the Holy Spirit to purify our thoughts. But this is the time when it is most helpful to ask that the mind be healed. As we do this, we remember that the only thing that matters in this world is that we use the story to learn it is just a story.

It can be very exciting to realize that we are, at this moment, a part of the second coming. We are doing this as we study the Course and put it into practice in our lives. For eons, we have had the experience of being unreal, but reality did not cease simply because we ignored it. The second coming is the awareness of reality. We will stop ignoring reality as we remove our attention from the illusion.

This is no small thing that we do.

As I go through the day, I will have many false thoughts and illusory experiences. I can indulge all of this, throw myself into the story, and pretend that it is reality. I can feel the excitement, boredom, fear, love, depression, and all the emotions that are fed by the story. If so, I will live a life without purpose.

Or, I can remember today that I am ready to wake up. I am ready to truly seize the day and to use each opportunity to see differently. I can give my confused thoughts to the Holy Spirit and ask Him to show me a truer perception. Every time I do this, I feel more like the eternal Divine Being that I am. Each time I do this, I heal the mind we all share, and each one of us comes closer to the moment of awakening. That is living a life of purpose. 

IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness, P 12

12 Behold, my child, reality is here. It belongs to you and me and God, and is perfectly satisfying to all of us. Only this awareness heals, because it is the awareness of truth.

In the end this is all that forgiveness does. It allows the truth to be true in our minds. We choose to be aware that there is only God, and we are part of His Mind. I can choose to allow the sense of Oneness that we are all a part of, and when I do, the world as I have known it falls away for the moment. This happens when I give myself to this writing in the quiet of the early morning. I feel the connection with the Holy Spirit, with Jesus, and with the Self.

It happens when I set aside all else and join a student to do our course together. Sharing from the heart and joining in purpose brings the truth into awareness and, with truth, joy. Sometimes, it happens at random moments as I set aside whatever the ego mind was focused on and allow myself to join with… well, with anything, and in that joining comes the sense of being one with everything.

In those moments, what have I forgiven? I have forgiven the belief that I could be alone, separate, not part of all that is. I have forgiven the very idea of separation in whatever form I imagine it. And I have forgiven the idea that I could ever be separate from my Source. I don’t yet stay only in this purified awareness. But each time I experience it, even for a brief time, I yearn for its return. It is my desire that brings it to me, but my desire is not always for peace.

It is astounding to me that I still choose the illusion at all, and yet I do.

I believe a fearful thought, and I am right back in the muck of separation beliefs. I become angry or frustrated over the smallest things, and I have lost the awareness of the presence of Love that had been mine just a moment before. These things don’t just happen. They require my active decision to place my awareness on them rather than on reality. This is what I forgive. And the return to peace is what forgiveness brings me.

I become angry about a situation, I place blame on a brother and hold a grievance, I become afraid of the future or regretful of the past. These are all ways in which I avoid reality. None of these behaviors or feelings in any way affect reality, but they affect my experience of it. Regardless of my experience, though, reality remains reality and is always available to me. Forgiveness has revealed to me my desire for reality. Now, I am only learning to master this choice. I do so whenever I realize I have chosen illusion over truth and choose again.  

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