ACIM Workbook 9. What Is the Second Coming? Year 2022

ACIM Workbook: 9. What Is the Second Coming? 1. Christ’s Second Coming, which is sure as God, is merely the correction of mistakes, and the return of sanity.

9. What Is the Second Coming?

1. Christ’s Second Coming, which is sure as God, is merely the correction of mistakes, and the return of sanity. ²It is a part of the condition that restores the never lost, and re-establishes what is forever and forever true. ³It is the invitation to God’s Word to take illusion’s place; the willingness to let forgiveness rest upon all things without exception and without reserve.

In other words, the Second Coming is the undoing of the ego and all that has occurred since the tiny mad idea. It is undone through forgiveness, and it happens for each of us as we are ready. It is happening for me now and for all of us who are reading this and practicing it. That we are doing this work is how we know it is our time to experience this Second Coming. I like how Jesus stresses that it merely corrects mistakes and that it restores the never lost. Clearly, the Second Coming is only undoing illusions. In truth, nothing has happened to be undone except in our confused minds.

Oneness Recognized at Last

2. It is the all-inclusive nature of Christ’s Second Coming that permits it to embrace the world and hold you safe within its gentle advent, which encompasses all living things with you. ²There is no end to the release the Second Coming brings, as God’s creation must be limitless. ³Forgiveness lights the Second Coming’s way, because it shines on everything as one. ⁴And thus is oneness recognized at last.

In this paragraph, I see that Jesus wants us to know that Christ’s Second Coming embraces the whole world and holds it safe. And this:  ³Forgiveness lights the Second Coming’s way, because it shines on everything as one. At last, we will recognize oneness. Each time I forgive myself or someone else; each time I forgive a situation or a thought, I am part of the Second Coming. Thus, each time I forgive, I embrace the world and hold it safe. Since Creation is limitless, there is no end to the release I help facilitate through forgiveness.

Still In God, Perfectly Safe

3. The Second Coming ends the lessons that the Holy Spirit teaches, making way for the Last Judgment, in which learning ends in one last summary that will extend beyond itself, and reaches up to God. ²The Second Coming is the time in which all minds are given to the hands of Christ, to be returned to spirit in the name of true creation and the Will of God.

Wow! What a statement this is! There will finally be no more lessons because who needs lessons once all is learned? Our work is done, and our mind is healed. We then are taken into God, and that requires nothing of us. I love that last sentence. ²The Second Coming is the time in which all minds are given to the hands of Christ, to be returned to spirit in the name of true creation and the Will of God.

Really, the only thing that happens is that we wake up from the dream that the world of time exists. Since the world is not real, nothing is lost, and nothing is left out. It is like waking up from a nightmare to discover you are still in bed and perfectly safe. We will wake up from the dream of separation, from the dream of a world of form, to discover we are still in God, perfectly safe.

Christ Restored

4. The Second Coming is the one event in time which time itself can not affect. ²For every one who ever came to die, or yet will come or who is present now, is equally released from what he made. ³In this equality is Christ restored as one Identity, in which the Sons of God acknowledge that they all are one. ⁴And God the Father smiles upon His Son, His one creation and His only joy.

In sentence two, we are told that all will be equally released, those who have come here and those who will come here. This is so because all are one, and in the Second Coming, this is remembered. Don’t you just love sentence four? ⁴And God the Father smiles upon His Son, His one creation and His only joy. This is already true, but in our release, we will be aware of it as true.

Our Help Is Needed

5. Pray that the Second Coming will be soon, but do not rest with that. ²It needs your eyes and ears and hands and feet. ³It needs your voice. ⁴And most of all it needs your willingness. ⁵Let us rejoice that we can do God’s Will, and join together in its holy light. ⁶Behold, the Son of God is one in us, and we can reach our Father’s Love through Him.

We still have work to do here. The body must be used for the purpose of salvation. We must join with Jesus to bring the Second Coming into manifestation. To say it another way, we must be willing to admit we are wrong and that God is right. We must be willing to give up the absurd desire for specialness so that we can remember our own glorious Self.

This is not hard. We all know how to do this. We do it each time we forgive an ego belief. That is, each time we refuse to see another as separate and different from us. We bring the day of release closer each time we decide to forgive rather than defend or attack. We are doing this now, and we will accomplish our purpose more quickly if we do it consistently.

It is a pure joy just to read this.

The second coming is the awakening. We awake from our sleeping dream of separateness and remember we are the Son of God. All that seemed to happen, all that we believed was real and had consequences, will fall away. Our memories will be fully restored.

No one will be left behind. And how could they? There is only one mind, and as the mind wakens, it wakens completely. The Last Judgment will then occur as God looks on us and sees the innocent Son of His creation, and gathers us unto Him. This is a gentle and loving alternative to the typical biblical version of the second coming and last judgment. This version remains true to what we know of God. He is Love, and what could Love do but behold Its Self as Innocence? God is Wholeness, and so It would only gather to Itself All That It Is. God is Peace and Joy, and what is there to do but exist in bliss with Its Self.

A part of the mind of the Son seems to be dreaming in this now moment.

It dreams of a billion ways to do the impossible. This dream of separation is ending, and the sleepy mind is beginning to rouse from its slumber. From the perspective of the dream, it seems like the characters must each awake, and yet it is not the dream figures that must wake but the dreamer. As the dreamer stirs from his slumber, the characters within the dream fade from the mind that thought them.

While still in the dream state, the sleeping Son of God uses his many imaginary selves to help Him regain His memory, and this awakening is expressed through the dream character. It seems that the Myron character is doing her part to awaken the mind by letting go of false ideas and choosing to know God once again.

The desire for awakening creates the circumstances within the dream that provide opportunities for enlightenment. As Myron seems to awaken, the sleeping mind shakes off a bit more of the slumber. Other dream selves respond to this heightened awareness, and their characters begin to call to themselves similar opportunities to further awaken the Self.

What does this feel like from the place within the dream that I know?

Well, I am shifting my awareness of what exactly “I” am. At the beginning of the dream of Myron, I thought I was this dream character. My identity was completely focused on her. It seemed desperately important to keep her body and her story going as long as possible.

What Myron did in the dream was all the story there was and all that I knew of myself. As Myron chooses differently, the “I” identity shifts. I begin to feel more like the maker of the dream than a character in the dream. This is not a permanent shift yet and goes back and forth for a while longer. But I will never be completely lost in the dream again because I know too much now.

Thinking about it from where I am now, I thought of a comical way of seeing it.

 It was like I was the creator of the Roadrunner cartoon and had written so many scenarios for so many years that I began to believe I was Wylie Coyote. I now desperately needed to capture the roadrunner. My entire attention was on my part in this drama to the point that all memory of being the writer faded away. Now all I could think of was getting that roadrunner.

I tried absolutely every device in the catalog. Each one failed over and over, and eventually, my interest in winning began to flag. I started looking around and wondering if there could be more to life than chasing an elusive prize. Because forgetting who I was was not the same as destroying who I was, I began to create new scenarios.

I still believed I was Wylie Coyote and was not yet willing to give up this assumed identity. For a while, I pretended all this stuff just happened to me. But the circumstances of the dream began to change. As I responded to those circumstances, I began to realize the truth. Can you imagine how funny it was when the truth fully dawned? I am the writer of the cartoon. But I got so absorbed I thought I was the character I wrote into imaginary existence.

I am actually the writer of all the characters and believed I was all of them.

The more I wake up, the more my characters, including the Myron character, lose interest in their silly pursuits. They began to put aside the foolish desires I had written into their characters. And the more this happened, the less interest I had in writing more stories for them. The beginning of the end of the dream is the enlightenment of the writer of the script.

I will finally return to my Self, and all the billions of characters will be forgotten. My Father will marvel at His Son’s imagination, and laughing at my play, He will gather me into His arms. And we live happily ever after with only a fading memory of a dream I once had.