ACIM Lesson 322 I can give up but what was never real.
I sacrifice illusions; nothing more. ²And as illusions go I find the gifts illusions tried to hide, awaiting me in shining welcome, and in readiness to give God’s ancient messages to me.
I can give up but what was never real.
ACIM Lesson 322
I can give up but what was never real.
1. I sacrifice illusions; nothing more. ²And as illusions go I find the gifts illusions tried to hide, awaiting me in shining welcome, and in readiness to give God’s ancient messages to me. ³His memory abides in every gift that I receive of Him. ⁴And every dream serves only to conceal the Self which is God’s only Son, the likeness of Himself, the Holy One Who still abides in Him forever, as He still abides in me.
2. Father, to You all sacrifice remains forever inconceivable. ²And so I cannot sacrifice except in dreams. ³As You created me, I can give up nothing You gave me. ⁴What You did not give has no reality. ⁵What loss can I anticipate except the loss of fear, and the return of love into my mind?
What Do I Really Sacrifice?
I imagine that almost everyone begins A Course in Miracles with the idea that sacrifice is going to be required. I certainly did. My hope was that perhaps the sacrifice would not be too great. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it required that I sacrifice everything I thought I knew. And then imagine my relief when I realized that what I thought I knew was worthless and so not really a sacrifice at all.
What Is Under All Those Illusions?
We sacrifice only illusions and illusions are hardly worth anything. What we get in return is what the illusions hid from us. Under all those illusions is something so incredible that I hardly know how to talk about it. We discover our Self, God’s only Son. When we think of ourselves as these bodies, it is almost impossible to take in what Jesus is telling us here.
Can You Imagine Your True Self?
What does it even mean that we discover our Self? Jesus says that we are the likeness of God and we are the Holy One Who still abides in God and that He abides in us. Imagine this as true for you! Can you do it? It is incredible to imagine that we gave up knowing our Self in order to have this experience. More extraordinary is that we could think of it as a loss. Let’s look at what would we lose in order to be what we are?
What Do I Lose?
To give up illusions, I would have to give up this limiting and frail body, that is destined to die in a few years. Could that really be a loss? Without the body I would never suffer, never be in pain, never feel separate and alone. Only bodies compete and so cannot truly love other bodies. Only bodies are driven to hatred and rage. Without a body, there is only oneness, love, peace, and freedom.
Why Cling to the Body?
Is there any reason to cling to the body? The only reason I can think of is that we have come to identify as a body. This means that we think we are our bodies and to sacrifice a body is to sacrifice life. Yet, how could this be? Bodies inevitably die and death is not life. We are not even living, really, just dreaming of living.
The only other fear of loss would be the self we made to represent ourselves. We can’t remember what it is like to not have a personal self. To us who are so attached to this personal self, it feels like annihilation to think of giving it up. But in reality, what we gain is a wonderful sense of connection unlike anything we feel here. Loneliness is a word without meaning to our Self. And our Self is perfect, without flaws, something we certainly cannot say about our self. When we let go of this false identity, we will know Ourselves as eternal Spirit. We will suffer nothing and will live in bliss. It’s not a bad deal, do you think?
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