ACIM Daily Lesson 252 The power of decision is my own.

Lesson 152

The power of decision is my own.

1. No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. ²No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. ³No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. ⁴And no one dies without his own consent. ⁵Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. ⁶Here is your world, complete in all details. ⁷Here is its whole reality for you. ⁸And it is only here salvation is. 

This is one of my all-time favorite lessons! I love it because this lesson places everything squarely in my hands where it can be undone. Did I ever think that I suffered because of something that was outside my mind? Or that I was sick or suffering because of something done to me and not by me? Of course, I did. But no more. Everything in my awareness is there because I have made the choice to have it there. In the past, there were reasons I made that choice and then quickly forgot I had done so.  

It’s My Choice Either Way

Sometimes I was punishing myself for my perceived sins. I thought I was experiencing my just deserts because I deserved nothing else. Just choosing to be part of the illusion is choosing to suffer. And maybe, sometimes I just wanted the experience, the drama, the excitement of the story just as I watch movies for the adrenalin rush they provide. There are still some brief glimpses into those ideas but for the most part, I am reviewing the show with much more detachment and with a purpose. I am here to undo (forgive) the beliefs that make the world what it is.

This understanding that I am not a victim to anything is the foundation of this undoing process. I cannot undo something that belongs to someone else so I must first take responsibility for what I came to forgive. No one can affect me without my consent. I give this consent because I want someone else to blame. But they are guilty of nothing and neither am I because this is all an illusion. Much has been seen but nothing has happened. The truth is that while I am not guilty, I am responsible. I gladly accept that responsibility these days because I see the value in doing so. I see that it is only here that salvation is. 

Truth Is All Inclusive

2. You may believe that this position is extreme, and too inclusive to be true. ²Yet can truth have exceptions? ³If you have the gift of everything, can loss be real? ⁴Can pain be part of peace, or grief of joy? ⁵Can fear and sickness enter in a mind where love and perfect holiness abide? ⁶Truth must be all-inclusive, if it be the truth at all. ⁷Accept no opposites and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely. 

It takes faith and trust to oppose the world while we still believe in the world. But if we do this practice consistently, we begin to realize that there is no world. However, we must not make exceptions. Reality is peace, joy, love, and oneness. It is not anger, fear, guilt, jealousy, hatred or anything that causes the slightest disturbance. There is no separation or conflict, in other words, there is no world at all. Without the world and its bodies and stories of bodies, there is only truth and the truth is magnificent! We are magnificent!

The Truth Is True All the Time

3. Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true, and nothing else is true. ²This you have heard before, but may not yet accept both parts of it. ³Without the first, the second has no meaning. ⁴But without the second, is the first no longer true. ⁵Truth cannot have an opposite. ⁶This can not be too often said and thought about. ⁷For if what is not true is true as well as what is true, then part of truth is false. ⁸And truth has lost its meaning. ⁹Nothing but the truth is true, and what is false is false. 

4. This is the simplest of distinctions, yet the most obscure. ²But not because it is a difficult distinction to perceive. ³It is concealed behind a vast array of choices that do not appear to be entirely your own. ⁴And thus the truth appears to have some aspects that belie consistency, but do not seem to be but contradictions introduced by you. 

It’s Always a Decision I Make

Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true, and nothing else is true. The first part is easy enough to accept. The second part might be an easy concept but do we really believe it? If I think that sometimes I am sick and the sickness came from anything other than my wish for sickness, then I do not believe that nothing but the truth is true.

If I believe that I am upset because my son is sick or my friend is in pain, or my bank account is too low, I do not believe the second part. I must consider what I actually feel and how I react to the world. Do I still make exceptions to the truth? If I believe that the truth has exceptions, then in my mind, the truth is not true.

For me to know that the truth is true, I must accept that whatever is happening to me or by me must come from a decision in my mind. Once I made up my mind that this is the only thing that made sense, I began to heal. I took responsibility for the seeming inconsistencies that belied the fact that the truth is true and nothing else is. I began to forgive my beliefs.

I Am Not Who I Seem to Be

5. As God created you, you must remain unchangeable, with transitory states by definition false. ²And that includes all shifts in feeling, alterations in conditions of the body and the mind; in all awareness and in all response. ³This is the all-inclusiveness which sets the truth apart from falsehood, and the false kept separate from the truth, as what it is. 

This sounded too inclusive to be true to me when I first read it. It didn’t seem true to me as I experienced my life. What I have come to realize is that the story of Myron is not my life. I am not connected to Myron at all unless I decide there is a connection and even then, it is not the truth. All I believe about me and my ‘life’ that is not joyful and fully loving is not reality. It is a reflection of the belief that I am the character in the story and the story is me. This is not possible. I am what God created; nothing more, nothing less.

As I Truly Exist

Think about what it means to be as God created us. We are unchangeable. Nothing we say or do or think affects our Self in any way. I have had an interesting life and in many ways, it has been difficult and painful. My Self witnessed it all fully, and yet, nothing about Me changed. There is not a shadow of the experience lingering on Me. Once over, the experience is as if it never happened.

My Self, as I truly exist, doesn’t feel sad and then happy, sick, and then well. There is no headache and then the pain is gone. There is not joy temporarily experienced to be replaced by something less. Yesterday was lovely. My mind was clear and I was happy. Last night right before bed, my son called. He reported that his holiday didn’t go as expected. He was sick with strange symptoms that were lingering.

After the call, I was no longer happy. I was concerned about him. I wanted to do something to help because it seemed he reached out for a reason. Though he didn’t articulate that he was worried about other things, I sensed that he was. I wondered if there was something I could do to make things easier for him. In that moment, it was like I thought I was Myron rather than the witness to the ancient story of Myron. And so, I suffered. This is what life is like for the sleepers. It is in stark contrast to the experience of the awakened.

The Ego Always Looks for Someone to Blame

The ego-mind wants to blame my son. He was the reason for my upset, the ego says. But it is way too late for the ego to convince me of that. He did nothing but share with me what seemed to be happening with him. I chose to see it as a call for help that I couldn’t answer and so to feel helpless. It is my thoughts alone that determine my experience of any situation. I have discovered that I can love my son through his story without feeling upset by it. It is a choice I make each time.

 God Did Not Make Chaos

6. Is it not strange that you believe to think you made the world you see is arrogance? ²God made it not. ³Of this you can be sure. ⁴What can He know of the ephemeral, the sinful and the guilty, the afraid, the suffering and lonely, and the mind that lives within a body that must die? ⁵You but accuse Him of insanity, to think He made a world where such things seem to have reality. ⁶He is not mad. ⁷Yet only madness makes a world like this. 

7. To think that God made chaos, contradicts His Will, invented opposites to truth, and suffers death to triumph over life; all this is arrogance. ²Humility would see at once these things are not of Him. ³And can you see what God created not? ⁴To think you can is merely to believe you can perceive what God willed not to be. ⁵And what could be more arrogant than this? 

God Is Not Insane

For so long, I believed this nonsense. Now I wonder how I could have been so blind, so obtuse. How could this world have anything to do with God? Is God insane? Or is it more likely that the world is made up of my guilty thoughts projected as stories that reflect those beliefs?

If I continue to believe the unbelievable, then I am the one who is insane. God created me as part of Himself and to think that Myron is me is to think that God is not very good at his job. LOL. I cannot be anything God does not will me to be. Nothing here is remotely true, but I am true, so I must not be here. 

Being Truly Humble

8. Let us today be truly humble, and accept what we have made as what it is. ²The power of decision is our own. ³Decide but to accept your rightful place as co-creator of the universe, and all you think you made will disappear. ⁴What rises to awareness then will be all that there ever was, eternally as it is now. ⁵And it will take the place of self-deceptions made but to usurp the altar to the Father and the Son. 

Do you realize what Jesus is telling us here? ³Decide but to accept your rightful place as co-creator of the universe, and all you think you made will disappear. What would you be happy to see disappear? I would like to see sadness and anger and hatred disappear. I would like to see fear and guilt disappear. How about suffering and death? Would you like to see that gone?

What would be left? Joy, everlasting peace, beauty beyond our present comprehension. Heaven would be what is left when we let go of the value we place in what we made. It does not warrant our defense of it. And let’s not forget that we are co-creators of the universe. Ok, now I am officially blown away! Oh, my dear God, I want to return Home.

Accepting the Power of Decision

9. Today we practice true humility, abandoning the false pretense by which the ego seeks to prove it arrogant. ²Only the ego can be arrogant. ³But truth is humble in acknowledging its mightiness, its changelessness and its eternal wholeness, all-encompassing, God’s perfect gift to His beloved Son. ⁴We lay aside the arrogance which says that we are sinners, guilty and afraid, ashamed of what we are; and lift our hearts in true humility instead to Him Who has created us immaculate, like to Himself in power and in love. 

10. The power of decision is our own. ²And we accept of Him that which we are, and humbly recognize the Son of God. ³To recognize God’s Son implies as well that all self-concepts have been laid aside, and recognized as false. ⁴Their arrogance has been perceived. ⁵And in humility the radiance of God’s Son, his gentleness, his perfect sinlessness, his Father’s Love, his right to Heaven and release from hell, are joyously accepted as our own. 

Claiming My Place in God

Yes! Yes! Let us do this! It is not arrogance and it is not heresy to claim our place with God. It is not arrogance to accept that what happens in these stories does not affect what God has made like Himself. In order to believe we are the character we came to observe we must deny God. We must deny His Parentage. And we must deny our Self. Shall we let go of all this nonsense and take our place alongside the Creator where we belong? Where we actually are? That would be true humility.

 Restoring His Home to God

11. Now do we join in glad acknowledgment that lies are false, and only truth is true. ²We think of truth alone as we arise, and spend five minutes practicing its ways, encouraging our frightened minds with this: 

³The power of decision is my own. ⁴This day I will accept myself as what my Father’s Will created me to be. 

⁵Then will we wait in silence, giving up all self-deceptions, as we humbly ask our Self that He reveal Himself to us. ⁶And He Who never left will come again to our awareness, grateful to restore His home to God, as it was meant to be. 

Let us do practice this today so that we may become willing to recognize our Self. I will not be fooled today by the imposter self. I stand today before my God and hold out my hand to Him. I offer Him my willingness to return to Him. I thank Him for creating me and for guaranteeing my creation by keeping me forever safe in His Mind.

 Waiting for Him

12. In patience wait for Him throughout the day, and hourly invite Him with the words with which the day began, concluding it with this same invitation to your Self. ²God’s Voice will answer, for He speaks for you and for your Father. ³He will substitute the peace of God for all your frantic thoughts, the truth of God for self-deceptions, and God’s Son for your illusions of yourself. 

Thank you, God. I love you, God.

To enjoy the Pathways of Light Insights on ACIM Lesson 152 click here.

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