ACIM Workbook Lesson 246 To love my Father is to love His Son. Let me not think that I can find the way to God, if I have hatred in my heart.
To love my Father is to love His Son.
1. Let me not think that I can find the way to God, if I have hatred in my heart. ²Let me not try to hurt God’s Son, and think that I can know his Father or my Self. ³Let me not fail to recognize myself, and still believe that my awareness can contain my Father, or my mind conceive of all the love my Father has for me, and all the love which I return to Him.
2. I will accept the way You choose for me to come to You, my Father. ²For in that will I succeed, because it is Your Will. ³And I would recognize that what You will is what I will as well, and only that. ⁴And so I choose to love Your Son. ⁵Amen.
1. Let me not think that I can find the way to God, if I have hatred in my heart.
These are three uncompromising statements and I like that. I like knowing exactly what works and what does not. I take these very seriously. This first one seems self-evident but there was a time I didn’t realize it was true. Even after I began the study of the Course, I made exceptions for those who I thought were too bad to forgive, such as people who abused children.
I even made exceptions for people who treated me badly. I remember thinking at one time that I forgave so many people, this one shouldn’t matter. All of that kind of thinking was in error. If I hate anyone, I cannot find my way to God. I finally started thinking of it this way; if God is Love, then I cannot bring hate into Him without changing Him because then He would be both Love and hate. And, of course, that is not possible.
That logic helped me to realize that all must be forgiven and seen as the Love they are. Later, I began to understand forgiveness and realized that I had been forgiving to destroy in believing that someone was guilty and then trying to forgive the guilt. I learned that I forgave because there was nothing to forgive. I forgave the thoughts in my mind about the other, and the healing of my mind allowed me to see them with Christ’s Vision. Now, I hate no one because to do so would be to keep me in hell, to keep all of us in hell.
²Let me not try to hurt God’s Son, and think that I can know his Father or my Self.
This is similar to the first. I used to think that if someone hurt me then I was justified in hurting them. Then I learned through ACIM that this is not so, that attack is never justified. At first, this idea felt like a sacrifice and it made me think that I was a victim to them. As I continued the study and practice of the Course, I realized that I was wrong about that. As I forgave and released beliefs, I became happier and more peaceful. I realized that I valued the peace and happiness a lot more than being right and feeling justified. Then it became easy and natural to choose love rather than defense.
The next step in this was to realize how often I did hurt others in more subtle or even casual ways. That took a strong desire to never cause harm so that I would be willing to become aware of those thoughts and desires. Sometimes it never reached the level of saying or doing anything, but was more of an attitude or even just thoughts in my mind.
For instance, there was someone I didn’t enjoy being around and when I came into contact with her, I always wished I hadn’t. No doubt, she could feel a lack of welcome from me even when I didn’t express it. When I worked in sales there was a competitor that I judged as unscrupulous and a customer I thought of as two-faced, and I felt justified in ‘warning’ other people about them.
This is causing harm and I eventually learned that the cost of doing this was too high. And as I continued to do the healing work in my own mind, I reached a level of real love. Then it wasn’t just about not hurting someone, it was about loving them. This is when I began to realize that it is possible for us to know our Self even while still in the illusionary story.
³Let me not fail to recognize myself, and still believe that my awareness can contain my Father, or my mind conceive of all the love my Father has for me, and all the love which I return to Him.
This is the goal, the reason we are studying and practicing the Course. When I first began this study, I thought it was so that I could have a happier dream, and this does happen, no doubt. But now I understand that my true purpose is to wake up from the dream and to realize Who I am. It is to know my Father and to know the love He has for me. As Jesus says, my awareness cannot contain this knowing unless I first recognize myself.
I know now what I am not. I am not this body, nor am I in this body. I never have been. There is nothing outside the mind so I am not actually living this story. I know this. But I am still learning to let go of the idea of a personal self. I find that I still reference the world to a personal self and so there is much left to undo. This is very exciting to think of and also a little unnerving.
It has been a long time since I knew myself as I am and I have believed a lot of untrue things. I have become comfortable in the limited awareness of myself as a human being even though that awareness has a lot of suffering and death in it. I have to wonder what it is I think about being a divine and eternal Being that there is to avoid or even to fear. But each day, I accept more healing and my mind opens a bit more to the certainty that this is what I want and what I will have.
2. I will accept the way You choose for me to come to You, my Father. ²For in that will I succeed, because it is Your Will. ³And I would recognize that what You will is what I will as well, and only that. ⁴And so I choose to love Your Son. ⁵Amen.
And so, I will accept the Will of God that is my will as well. I will accept that I am God the Son and will do my part to restore the Sonship to Its Oneness by choosing to love God’s Son. All of it, without exception.
If you would like to access Pathways of Light Insights on this lesson click here.
Click here for an excellent process from Regina Dawn Akers to get to the root cause of your upset.
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