ACIM Chapter 9. VI. The Acceptance of Your Brother. P 1-3

ACIM Chapter 9. VI. The Acceptance of Your Brother. P 1-3

VI. The Acceptance of Your Brother

1 How can you become increasingly aware of the Holy Spirit in you except by His effects? You cannot see Him with your eyes nor hear Him with your ears. How, then, can you perceive Him at all? If you inspire joy and others react to you with joy, even though you are not experiencing joy yourself there must be something in you that is capable of producing it. If it is in you and can produce joy, and if you see that it does produce joy in others, you must be dissociating it in yourself.

When I think of the Holy Spirit’s effects on me, I think of a healed mind manifesting as a healed life. I notice that I feel better physically and emotionally. I have less worry and less fear. And I see that while I am aware of ego thoughts, I don’t believe them like I used to. I am more aware of any desire to run and hide or to defend and attack, and I am not as interested in that as I used to be.

I was surprised when I read this paragraph.

Before, I had not thought of it in terms of joy. Now, I am aware of the Holy Spirit in me as I notice that I inspire joy, even if I am not experiencing joy. This phenomenon must be produced by something, and it is clearly not me. The ego certainly does not produce joy in anyone, so it must be the Holy Spirit.

Do I see others reacting to me with joy? Yes, thinking of it, sometimes I do. I hope it happens a lot, whether I notice it or not. I have had times when I was absolutely not feeling joyful, but when called to minister, something within me responded in such a way as to inspire comfort, peace, and joy. Since I wasn’t feeling those things when called, where did the response come from? This is the way I know the Holy Spirit. I know Him from my experience of Him moving through me.

VI. The Acceptance of Your Brother

2 It seems to you that the Holy Spirit does not produce joy consistently in you only because you do not consistently arouse joy in others. Their reactions to you are your evaluations of His consistency. When you are inconsistent you will not always give rise to joy, and so you will not always recognize His consistency. What you offer to your brother you offer to Him, because He cannot go beyond your offering in His giving. This is not because He limits His giving, but simply because you have limited your receiving. The decision to receive is the decision to accept.

The reason I don’t think the Holy Spirit produces joy in me consistently is that I don’t always see the effects of it in others. I don’t always arouse joy in other people. Instead of questioning the Holy Spirit, I might look to myself. Am I receiving what the Holy Spirit would give me? The Holy Spirit is always giving, but I block His gifts if I am unwilling to accept them.

I don’t want to block the Holy Spirit.

If I block the Holy Spirit and do not allow Him to inspire joy in me, I won’t inspire joy in others. I then take this as proof that the Holy Spirit is inconsistent. But I have finally learned that this is never true. I no longer question the Holy Spirit but understand that He is always giving, and it can only be me who is allowing the ego mind to block what He would give.

There was a time when I treasured my bad moods and defended them from anything that threatened to lift them. I defended my identity as one who is depressed. As my mind opened more and more to healing, I released that to the Holy Spirit. I used to treasure my identity as one who was unpredictably angry, whose tongue was sharp, whose words were weapons. I thought it was the way I defended myself against the world. As I learned to release my fear to the Holy Spirit, I no longer needed my defenses, and instead, I extended the joy and the love I received from the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit consistently extends love because that is what He is. He extends it to me because He knows that is what I am. As I lay down more and more of my defenses, I am learning to receive the love coming my way. As I receive it, I give it as naturally as does the Holy Spirit. I am becoming more consistent in opening to love, and so I am becoming more consistent in inspiring joy.

VI. The Acceptance of Your Brother

3 If your brothers are part of you, will you accept them? Only they can teach you what you are, for your learning is the result of what you taught them. What you call upon in them you call upon in yourself. And as you call upon it in them it becomes real to you. God has but one Son, knowing them all as one. Only God Himself is more than they but they are not less than He is. Would you know what this means? If what you do to my brother you do to me, and if you do everything for yourself because we are part of you, everything we do belongs to you as well. Everyone God created is part of you and shares His glory with you. His Glory belongs to Him, but it is equally yours. You cannot, then, be less glorious than He is.

In this paragraph Jesus explains our relationship to each other and to God. We are one with each other, part of each other. We don’t see that in the illusion because, of course, that is the purpose of the illusion. It is our desire to experience not- oneness, and so we made images of separateness. We made different bodies and different personalities with different problems and different experiences. We made different things with which to surround ourselves. It makes for a very believable experience, but it changes nothing. God knows us as His one Son, and therefore, we are that.

Only they can teach you what you are, for your learning is the result of what you taught them.

I am learning to see my brother as one with me, which is giving me a different experience. I never think that what I do affects only me. Nor do I think my brother’s feelings are his problem and not my concern. I never think that my thoughts are for me alone. Sometimes, I will be unaware of this, but it is easy now to bring it back into focus.

At first, I changed my behavior. I started being kinder and more thoughtful, knowing that this was a step in the right direction and that it was my way of making a commitment to see differently. If this person in front of me was actually another aspect of myself, then it only made sense to treat them the way I would want to be treated. Over time, I began to believe that the person in front of me was an aspect of myself, so I didn’t need to change my behavior. My behavior changed because my mind had changed.

I still fall back into ego behavior when I start thinking through the ego mind, but I see it, and I realize what has happened. This is becoming natural and means that my mind is being healed of the desire to be separate. My loving and kind actions and even my thoughts affect others and also teach me as it reinforces my new learning. So, as I teach my brother that he is part of me, I learn that I am part of him.

Jesus also explains that God is more than I am and that I am all that God is.

I used to puzzle over this. Now, though, this makes perfect sense because my mind is being healed of separation thinking. I am part of you, and we are part of God. What belongs to God belongs to us as well. God is glorious and so we are glorious. This is equally true of all my brothers, regardless of our stories in the illusion. In fact, our illusory stories have no effect on what is eternally true.

As Jesus says in this paragraph, Everyone God created is part of you and shares His glory with you. His Glory belongs to Him, but it is equally yours. You cannot, then, be less glorious than He is. When thinking about this from the perspective of the ego, it makes little sense, but seen without a belief in separation, it is obvious. I treat each brother as if he shares the glory of God to learn that I share the glory of God.

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