ACIM Workbook Daily Lesson 160, Year 2022

ACIM Daily Lesson 160 I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.

I am at home. Fear is the stranger here. ACIM Lesson 160

I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.

ACIM Lesson 160

Lesson 160

I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.

1. Fear is a stranger to the ways of love. ²Identify with fear, and you will be a stranger to yourself. ³And thus you are unknown to you. ⁴What is your Self remains an alien to the part of you which thinks that it is real, but different from yourself. ⁵Who could be sane in such a circumstance? ⁶Who but a madman could believe he is what he is not, and judge against himself?

Talk about an identity crisis! We are made of love and light and we exist in Love and Light.  And yet, we identify with the darkness. There was TV show about a man who was a psychopath. He called the dark thoughts that compelled him to kill his dark passenger. We have a dark passenger, too, and it compels us to judge and hate.

In the show, this man compromised with the dark passenger. He did this by killing only those who he deemed deserving of death. We try to compromise with our dark passenger by projecting the guilt onto those we judge. But we have come to identify ourselves as our dark passenger. As Jesus says, we have become unknown to our Self and that is clearly insane.

Our Dark Passenger

2. There is a stranger in our midst, who comes from an idea so foreign to the truth he speaks a different language, looks upon a world truth does not know, and understands what truth regards as senseless. ²Stranger yet, he does not recognize to whom he comes, and yet maintains his home belongs to him, while he is alien now who is at home. ³And yet, how easy it would be to say, “This is my home. ⁴Here I belong, and will not leave because a madman says I must.”

Just as the man in the TV show accommodated his dark passenger with compromises, we do the same. We live in fear as long as we bow down to the ego and so we pray for less fear. All along, fear is the stranger in our mind. We need not accommodate it at all. It should be easy to turn from the ego. It is a belief outside the Mind of God and thus does not exist at all. Why do we continue to allow it to make its home in our holy mind?

We Invited the Ego In

3. What reason is there for not saying this? ²What could the reason be except that you had asked this stranger in to take your place, and let you be a stranger to yourself? ³No one would let himself be dispossessed so needlessly, unless he thought there were another home more suited to his tastes.

Oh my goodness. We have done this to ourselves. The ego did not force its way into our minds, we invited it in. The idea of specialness was so enticing that we thought fear was a small price to pay. That was an error but we don’t need to keep the error going by making it over and over. We can return to our natural state at any time we want to.

Fear or Love

4. Who is the stranger? ²Is it fear or you who are unsuited to the home which God provided for His Son? ³Is fear His Own, created in His likeness? ⁴Is it fear that love completes, and is completed by? ⁵There is no home can shelter love and fear. ⁶They cannot coexist. ⁷If you are real, then fear must be illusion. ⁸And if fear is real, then you do not exist at all.

The decision to seek for specialness was made such a long time ago that we have forgotten what we lost in the bargain. Jesus is reminding us that we are Sons of God and as such fear must be a strange passenger indeed. He is also telling us that love and fear cannot coexist so we must choose.

And is it a choice at all? How can we choose not to know what we are? What a job it must be to maintain this absurd illusion. As Jesus says: ⁷If you are real, then fear must be illusion. ⁸And if fear is real, then you do not exist at all. Clearly, we exist so fear cannot be real. Accept this and awakening is accomplished.

Who Is the Stranger Here?

5. How simply, then, the question is resolved. ²Who fears has but denied himself and said, “I am the stranger here. ³And so I leave my home to one more like me than myself, and give him all I thought belonged to me.” ⁴Now is he exiled of necessity, not knowing who he is, uncertain of all things but this; that he is not himself, and that his home has been denied to him.

6. What does he search for now? ²What can he find? ³A stranger to himself can find no home wherever he may look, for he has made return impossible. ⁴His way is lost, except a miracle will search him out and show him that he is no stranger now. ⁵The miracle will come. ⁶For in his home his Self remains. ⁷It asked no stranger in, and took no alien thought to be Itself. ⁸And It will call Its Own unto Itself in recognition of what is Its Own.

It Would Take a Miracle

We put ourselves in an impossible situation in which we chose separation over oneness and so our identity was lost to us. This choice made return impossible since we don’t remember what we are. It would take a miracle to correct this and luckily, the miracle is available to us. Now that we know what happened, we can call on the miracle and it will come. The Self we are is not confused and has gone nowhere. That Self will call Us unto Itself in recognition of what is Its Own.  

God’s Certainty Suffices

7. Who is the stranger? ²Is he not the one your Self calls not? ³You are unable now to recognize this stranger in your midst, for you have given him your rightful place. ⁴Yet is your Self as certain of Its Own as God is of His Son. ⁵He cannot be confused about creation. ⁶He is sure of what belongs to Him. ⁷No stranger can be interposed between His knowledge and His Son’s reality. ⁸He does not know of strangers. ⁹He is certain of His Son.

8. God’s certainty suffices. ²Whom He knows to be His Son belongs where He has set His Son forever. ³He has answered you who ask, “Who is the stranger?” ⁴Hear His Voice assure you, quietly and sure, that you are not a stranger to your Father, nor is your Creator stranger made to you. ⁵Whom God has joined remain forever one, at home in Him, no stranger to Himself.

Jesus is telling us very simply that we are not lost. We are what God created and nothing else. We are where He placed us and so we are in Him. So, we are not a stranger to our Father and the ego has not changed that. Nor has the ego made God a stranger to us. What we are is still in place, in no way affected by this dream of separation.

We Offer Thanks to Christ

9. Today we offer thanks that Christ has come to search the world for what belongs to Him. ²His vision sees no strangers, but beholds His Own and joyously unites with them. ³They see Him as a stranger, for they do not recognize themselves. ⁴Yet as they give Him welcome, they remember. ⁵And He leads them gently home again, where they belong.

10. Not one does Christ forget. ²Not one He fails to give you to remember, that your home may be complete and perfect as it was established. ³He has not forgotten you. ⁴But you will not remember Him until you look on all as He does. ⁵Who denies his brother is denying Him, and thus refusing to accept the gift of sight by which his Self is clearly recognized, his home remembered and salvation come.

We are all going to awaken and remember what we are. We do this as we forgive the illusion and let it go but we must forgive all of it. Each relationship must be healed, each ego belief undone. In chapter 18, Jesus says this.

²Yet this you cannot know until every perception has been cleansed and purified, and finally removed forever. (ACIM, T-18.IX.14:2)

We will recognize our Self as we recognize It in our brother and we won’t do that if we hold grievances. It is in our best interest to spend this time here forgiving all that is not part of God.

To enjoy the Pathways of Light Insights on ACIM Lesson 160 click here.

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