ACIM Workbook Daily Lesson 138, Year 2022

ACIM Daily Lesson 138 Heaven is the decision I must make.

Lesson 138

Heaven is the decision I must make.

1. In this world Heaven is a choice, because here we believe there are alternatives to choose between. ²We think that all things have an opposite, and what we want we choose. ³If Heaven exists there must be hell as well, for contradiction is the way we make what we perceive, and what we think is real.

2. Creation knows no opposite. ²But here is opposition part of being “real.” ³It is this strange perception of the truth that makes the choice of Heaven seem to be the same as the relinquishment of hell. ⁴It is not really thus. ⁵Yet what is true in God’s creation cannot enter here until it is reflected in some form the world can understand. ⁶Truth cannot come where it could only be perceived with fear. ⁷For this would be the error truth can be brought to illusions. ⁸Opposition makes the truth unwelcome, and it cannot come.

 Opposites

Only in the world is there the idea of opposites and here everything has an opposite. But in creation (Heaven) there is no opposite. There is only what is true and what is real. Nothing else exists. However, since we imagine we are here in the land of opposites, we must choose from those opposites what will believe. As long as we keep alive the deception of choosing both, we will live in conflict and thus we will suffer. We cannot choose truth because this is a dream, but we can choose to dream of something close to truth.

Choice

3. Choice is the obvious escape from what appears as opposites. ²Decision lets one of conflicting goals become the aim of effort and expenditure of time. ³Without decision, time is but a waste and effort dissipated. ⁴It is spent for nothing in return, and time goes by without results. ⁵There is no sense of gain, for nothing is accomplished; nothing learned.

4. You need to be reminded that you think a thousand choices are confronting you, when there is really only one to make. ²And even this but seems to be a choice. ³Do not confuse yourself with all the doubts that myriad decisions would induce. ⁴You make but one. ⁵And when that one is made, you will perceive it was no choice at all. ⁶For truth is true, and nothing else is true. ⁷There is no opposite to choose instead. ⁸There is no contradiction to the truth.

Only One Choice

The reason the world continues to play out in our minds like the longest-running bad play ever is that we think there are thousands of choices to decide between. Will I choose to make money my god, or will I choose to walk a spiritual path instead? Will I try to fix my child’s life or at least tell him the best way to live it? Or will I let him live it to the best of his ability and support him as he does so? Will I go to the show with my friends or stay home? Will I take this medicine or try a herbal solution? Or Will I eat ice cream for dessert or stay on my diet? It is endless. No wonder we are still lost in our stories.

Or maybe not. Maybe it is simple. What if I only had one choice to make no matter what seemed to be happening? Wouldn’t that simplify everything? Wouldn’t that help me to awaken more quickly? What if in every case, I realized that the only choice I was making was which mind to use to make the decision? Do I look at the particular question with the split mind, or do I turn to the Holy Spirit to guide my choice? In choosing to make decisions with the split mind (the wrong mind) I am choosing to stay in the world of my dreams even if it is bringing me nightmares. If I choose, instead, to use my right mind where the Holy Spirit abides, I will awaken from the dreams.

Choice for Heaven

5. Choosing depends on learning. ²And the truth cannot be learned, but only recognized. ³In recognition its acceptance lies, and as it is accepted it is known. ⁴But knowledge is beyond the goals we seek to teach within the framework of this course. ⁵Ours are teaching goals, to be attained through learning how to reach them, what they are, and what they offer you. ⁶Decisions are the outcome of your learning, for they rest on what you have accepted as the truth of what you are, and what your needs must be.

6. In this insanely complicated world, Heaven appears to take the form of choice, rather than merely being what it is. ²Of all the choices you have tried to make this is the simplest, most definitive and prototype of all the rest, the one which settles all decisions. ³If you could decide the rest, this one remains unsolved. ⁴But when you solve this one, the others are resolved with it, for all decisions but conceal this one by taking different forms. ⁵Here is the final and the only choice in which is truth accepted or denied.

Making Better Decisions

Jesus tells us that choosing depends on learning. He also points out the truth can’t be learned but only accepted. So what are we trying to learn? Within the world, we have choices to make and we are learning how to do this. We need to know what we are choosing now and how it affects us. Once we understand the consequences of our present choices, we need to know how to choose differently.

Through doing these lessons and learning to turn to the Holy Spirit as my Guide and my Interpreter of the world, I have begun to make better decisions. My son had a difficult decision to make and the correct decision seemed obvious to me. I wanted to talk to him about it to be sure he would make the better decision. I felt like I really had to call him. The feeling was that this had to be done now, right now before it was too late.

Trust

I have come to recognize that sense of urgency is to be distrusted. The ego is always pushing to do, do, do. So, I didn’t do anything. Instead, I went within and I asked for guidance. I felt immediate peace but still, I did nothing. A little later while my mind was relaxed, I saw a clear thought. It was, “Trust your brother.” I knew this was from Spirit and I understood why this was best.

If I jump into my son’s life instructing him on how to live it, I may as well tell him I don’t have faith in him. How painful it would be for him to think I had lost faith in him. Maybe, he will make a mistake in his choice and that’s ok. That is how we learn that it is better to go within for our answers. He can’t learn that if someone else is doing it for him. The world we made is insanely complicated but the solution is simple.

Life or Death

7. So we begin today considering the choice that time was made to help us make. ²Such is its holy purpose, now transformed from the intent you gave it; that it be a means for demonstrating hell is real, hope changes to despair, and life itself must in the end be overcome by death. ³In death alone are opposites resolved, for ending opposition is to die. ⁴And thus salvation must be seen as death, for life is seen as conflict. ⁵To resolve the conflict is to end your life as well.

8. These mad beliefs can gain unconscious hold of great intensity, and grip the mind with terror and anxiety so strong that it will not relinquish its ideas about its own protection. ²It must be saved from salvation, threatened to be safe, and magically armored against truth. ³And these decisions are made unaware, to keep them safely undisturbed; apart from question and from reason and from doubt.

Salvation

For much of my life, I suffered from anxiety and depression. Up until I had children, I always considered suicide as my salvation. If things got too bad, I had a way out. Even after I had children the thought of death seemed like salvation, only now it was denied to me. If I think that death is how I am saved from my misery, then life seems like a threat. God is Life eternal and so the threat seems to be God and seems to be an eternal threat. I didn’t think all this out at the time but in retrospect, I see my thought process clearly. A Course in Miracles showed me how to find salvation in God.

Choosing Consciously

9. Heaven is chosen consciously. ²The choice cannot be made until alternatives are accurately seen and understood. ³All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding, to be judged again, this time with Heaven’s help. ⁴And all mistakes in judgment that the mind had made before are open to correction, as the truth dismisses them as causeless. ⁵Now are they without effects. ⁶They cannot be concealed, because their nothingness is recognized.

10. The conscious choice of Heaven is as sure as is the ending of the fear of hell, when it is raised from its protective shield of unawareness, and is brought to light. ²Who can decide between the clearly seen and the unrecognized? ³Yet who can fail to make a choice between alternatives when only one is seen as valuable; the other as a wholly worthless thing, a but imagined source of guilt and pain? ⁴Who hesitates to make a choice like this? ⁵And shall we hesitate to choose today?

No Real Effects

It took many years for me to choose against all the guilt in my mind and the debilitating fear that gripped me. But I did just as Jesus describes here. I had to look at it and I had to question my beliefs rather than assuming I was right. I did this with Heaven’s help because the ego was not interested in my release. Its only goal is to keep the world going.

As I looked with the Holy Spirit at each circumstance, each torturous thought in my mind, I began to see that they were just mistakes, not sins. I began to see my way out. If this whole thing is just mistaken thoughts projected to look like reality, I must be safe. If they are not the truth, they cannot have real effects no matter how it seems they do.

I look back on this and it is unbelievable that I never saw that I was hiding these choices from myself. It seemed like the world was just happening to me and from that perspective, I could only feel guilty and fear God. Seen clearly it all seems ridiculous but the absurdity of it was not clear at first. When I realized that ego thinking is like a haze that obscures sight, I was willing to let that go and see clearly at last.

Our Practice

11. We make the choice for Heaven as we wake, and spend five minutes making sure that we have made the one decision that is sane. ²We recognize we make a conscious choice between what has existence and what has nothing but an appearance of the truth. ³Its pseudo-being, brought to what is real, is flimsy and transparent in the light. ⁴It holds no terror now, for what was made enormous, vengeful, pitiless with hate, demands obscurity for fear to be invested there. ⁵Now it is recognized as but a foolish, trivial mistake.

12. Before we close our eyes in sleep tonight, we reaffirm the choice that we have made each hour in between. ²And now we give the last five minutes of our waking day to the decision with which we awoke. ³As every hour passed, we have declared our choice again, in a brief quiet time devoted to maintaining sanity. ⁴And finally, we close the day with this, acknowledging we chose but what we want:

⁵Heaven is the decision I must make. ⁶I make it now, and will not change my mind, because it is the only thing I want.

Thoughts Can Be Changed

Before I found my way out of the most confusing of the beliefs, everything seemed so real and so important that I felt damned for each mistake. I can hardly remember what that was like, just that it happened. But now, though my mind still stumbles on some untrue thoughts, I am not afraid of it. I know it is just thoughts and that thoughts change when I change my mind. I happily do whatever needs to be done knowing that I am being led out of hell and into Heaven just by doing this work.

Contemplation 2026

To enjoy the Pathways of Light Insights on ACIM Lesson 138 click here.

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