Daily Lesson

  

Lesson 165
Let not my mind deny the
Thought of God.  

   <  GUIDANCE from ELDER BROTHER >    

   What makes this world seem real except your own

   denial of the truth that lies beyond?

   What but your thoughts of misery and death

   obscures the perfect happiness and the

   Eternal Life your Father wills for you?

   And what could hide what cannot be concealed

   except illusion? What could keep from you

   what you already have except your choice

   to see it not, denying it is there?

   The Thought of God created you. It left

   you not, nor have you ever been apart

   from It an instant. It belongs to you.

   By It you live. It is the Source of Life,

   holding you One with It, and everything

   is One with you because It left you not.

   The Thought of God protects you, cares for you,

   makes soft your resting place and smooth your way,

   lighting your mind with happiness and love.

   Eternity and Everlasting Life

   shine in your mind because the Thought of God

   has left you not, and still abide with you.

   Who would deny his safety and his peace,

   his joy, his healing and his peace of mind,

   his quiet rest, his calm awakening,

   if he but recognized where they abide?

   Would he not instantly prepare to go

   where they are found, abandoning all else

   as worthless in comparison with them?

   And having found them, would he not make sure

   they stay with him and he remains with them?

   Deny not Heaven. It is yours today

   but for the asking. Nor need you perceive

   how great the gift, how changed your mind will be,

   before it comes to you. Ask to receive,

   and it is given you. Conviction lies

   within it. Till you welcome it as yours

   uncertainty remains. Yet God is fair.

   Sureness is not expected, to receive

   what only your acceptance can bestow.

   Ask with desire. You need not be sure

   that you request the only thing you want.

   But when you have received you will be sure

   you have the treasure you have always sought.

   What would you then exchange it for? What would

   induce you now to let it fade away

   from your ecstatic vision? For this sight

   proves that you have exchanged your blindness for

   the seeing eyes of Christ; your mind has come

   to lay aside denial, and accept

   the Thought of God as its inheritance.

   Now is all doubting past, the journey's end

   made certain, and salvation given you.

   Now is Christ's power in your mind, to heal

   as you were healed. For now are you among

   the Saviours of the world. Your destiny

   lies there and nowhere else. Would God consent

   to let His Son remain forever starved

   by his denial of the nourishment

   he needs to live? Abundance dwells in him,

   and deprivation cannot cut him off

   from God's sustaining Love and from his home.|

   Practice today in hope. For hope indeed

   is justified. Your doubts are meaningless,

   for God is certain. And the Thought of Him

   is never absent. Sureness must abide

   within you who are host to Him. This course

   removes all doubts which you have interposed

   between Him and your certainty of Him.|

   We count on Him and not upon ourselves

   to give us certainty. And in His Name

   we practice as His Word directs us do.

   His sureness lies beyond our every doubt.

   His Love remains beyond our every fear.

   The Thought of Him is still beyond all dreams

   and in our minds, according to His Will.|

   ~ Original Handscript of ACIM

Daily Lesson Page   

ACIM Edmonton - Sarah's Reflections 

LESSON 165
Let not my mind deny the Thought of God.

All of our chatter, our dramas, our stories and our distractions in this world are about keeping us from awareness of what we are. It is to distract us from the present moment by drowning out our awareness of God's love, and of the experience of Oneness. How do we know that this is what is going on? It is if anything but peace and joy are in our experience. With our defences,  we are saying no to God's Love. His Love is analogous to the sun, shining constantly on us,  inviting us to enjoy its warmth while we hang out in the dark, complaining that there is no light in our lives. "What makes this world seem real except your own denial of the truth that lies beyond?" (1.1) The truth is there and we are actively pushing it out of awareness with our thoughts of misery and death. The responsibility is all ours. We don't like that so we put responsibility on others for taking our peace. Yet if the peace is in us and we don't experience it, then we are actively choosing to throw it away and blaming others for taking it from us. Yet, we can't change the fact that we are still a thought in the Mind of God and have not left our Source which is our life.

It is not that we should see our defences against the love that we are as a bad thing. The ego us neither good or bad. It is nothing at all.  So, rather than loving or hating it eventually we will recognize its nothingness.  Expecting the ego not to distract and defend, is like expecting kids not to do what kids do. But just as we learn patience with kids, we must be patient and gentle with ourselves as we take this journey back to the recognition of the Self. As we go through this process, we are holding two thought systems in our minds and there will be conflict as a result.

We are now walking this path,  because we have said yes to God's love. And this requires that we now learn to live in the mystery of not knowing. It is the  "I know" mind that we are familiar with. To accept that we don't know, means that we must learn to let go of preconceived notions of everything including our self concepts,  beliefs, images we have made and ultimately of this world that we think is our home. We don't need to seek for what is true. This journey is about undoing the false. But when we surrender into the unknowing it can be a disorienting time.

 What is it that makes this world so real to us? It is precisely our denial of the divine Self that we are. This denial is reflected in our choice for the ego. Why would we make such a choice? We believe that we have abandoned God, stolen our life at His expense and now He is after us. So we have fled into the body and the world which is our defence  against the truth. The ego has led us to believe that we are now guilty for it says that what we have done is a sin, and that we should fear the wrath of God and expect punishment. Think about the God that is described in the Bible and what is said about us as sinners. Can you see how this is the God made by the ego. This is not the God that Jesus teaches us about in the course. Jesus tells us that we have done nothing and that we are still innocent. Do we get that? No, as long as we still invest in the body and our individual self and the world as a defence against the truth of who we are.  This world, which feels so real to us, is actually all illusion. Think about what that means. It means that nothing here will last. Bodies don't last. The earth won't last. Nothing here is real. The only thing that we can truly count on is the eternal. 

Jesus is teaching us, that the physical world is actually just a projection  of our minds and thus an illusion. It is radical thought and only a concept until we have the experience of the truth. It is an experience of the mystical where we see that the world is a dream.  What we see in the world actually reflects what is going on in our minds. Thus it is the effect of our thoughts. Yet we think that the world is the cause of our experiences here and we are victims of those experiences, starting at our birth when we experience our dependency and loudly proclaim that we did not ask to be born. That is the way that the ego has set it up. Yet it is not the truth. Nothing happens to us without our choice and our decision.  

Since the world is  a reflection of our thoughts, it now becomes a valuable tool for our awakening because it helps us to see the state of our mind. When we are willing take responsibility for our thoughts, recognizing that all of our experiences are a product of those thoughts, then we can make another choice. Instead of seeing ourselves as victims of external conditions, we accept the power of our minds to create the conditions of our lives. "Learning devices are not lessons in themselves. Their purpose is to merely facilitate learning. The worst a faulty learning device can do is fail to facilitate learning. It has no power in itself to introduce actual learning errors" (T.2.IV.3.2-4) Because we are in denial and don't recognize our unconscious guilt projected on the world, we need these opportunities offered by the situations presented in the world for us to see our projections. It is our thoughts of misery and death that obscure the perfect happiness that God has willed for us. The reason we don't experience our perfect happiness is not because God is elusive and is hiding from us but because we are hiding behind our denial. What God has given is not obscure. Jesus is telling us that God can't be concealed except by our choice to deny the truth. It is our choice to listen to the lies of the ego. Jesus keeps reminding us that we are responsible. But, by releasing all that is false that is of our own making, the thought system of the ego can be released by bringing our awareness to it and giving it over to the Holy Spirit who will shine it away. Sometimes I think I am doing just that and wonder why the fearful feelings continue. But when I really look at my process, I see that I am still choosing to hold these feelings while pretending to ask for help. This is why we have to be so very honest with ourselves. Sometimes we would rather not turn over our anger and despair still seeing benefit to ourselves in holding onto it. We justify why we simply can't let it go when, in fact, we are choosing not to.

The only answer for our peace and happiness is  to bring our fearful thoughts to the Holy Spirit. Pursuing things in the world is our attempt to escape from the fear, the loneliness, and our feelings of isolation by indulging our egos. It is an attempt to try to repress or block these thoughts and feelings from our awareness by pursuing a variety of distractions. The ego needs experience. It hates boredom and while we say we want peace, we do everything to be rid of it. Why? because peace is actually threatening to to the ego. Yet the Thought of God has not left us nor could we ever be apart from it for an instant. It is our very life. "By it you live." (2.4) If we were to be unplugged from this Thought, we would no longer live as we would no longer have a Source. It is this Thought that offers everything so when we deny it, we deny our absolute safety, our protection, our soft resting place, our peace, our joy, our rest, our soft awakening, our happiness-all this and more is available to us in every moment. This is what Heaven is and it is here NOW. It is ours today even though we are not aware of it.  "It is yours today, but for the asking."  (4.2) We look for our heaven in this world but it is not there. There is no happiness and peace to be found in this world.

 To receive what we have denied, we just need to ask and it is given. We don't need to be utterly convinced nor to have no doubt thoughts. If conviction was required as a prerequisite to asking, then God, would indeed be unfair. And Jesus tells us that this is not the case. "God is fair," (4.7) he assures us, because we don't have to be certain to ask. We simply ask with desire. (5.1) He knows we will have doubt until we come to the point where we have the experience that brings "ecstatic vision." (5.5) Our experience on this journey is that we do have doubt and we may even question at times whether this is the path for us. Along the way, we have lots of uncertainty; we waver; we leave the path at times; we wonder if God is really there because we don't see evidence of Him in the world and do feel that He is obscure from us.   Jesus knows our divided state of mind and our distress at our lack of discipline and commitment. Thus he assures us that "sureness is not required to receive what only your acceptance can bestow." (4.8) So in spite of all of your doubts, simply ask and welcome the moments of respite as yours. And as we do a space in our minds is cleared of doubt where we welcome the truth until the "treasure that you have always sought" becomes apparent to us and with it comes certainty that this is all that we would ever want. Now we are sure. It is a certainty that our Father already holds about us and therefore, if we are host to Him, then that certainty has to be in us as well.  "This course removes all doubts which you have interposed between Him and your certainty of Him." (7.6)

So, no matter how deprived we feel, no matter how much we have denied the nourishment that can only come from God, we can't remain in this state forever. It is our destiny to wake up and we don't escape our destiny because God would never consent to us remaining forever starved by our own denial, meaning that His Love is already available and present in our minds and is unaffected by our lack of awareness. So it is time to give up the fight because no one escapes his destiny. Our stubborn resistance only prolongs our suffering. This is a lesson in hopefulness which is not a blind hope but is fully justified.

So if it is our thoughts of misery that obscure our happiness then bringing our darkness to the light will work because now we are inviting the miracle in. We are asking for healing of our thoughts. We are asking help of the Holy Spirit so our perceptions can be changed so that the world will now reflect back to us a new and healed perception. "Nothing and everything cannot coexist. To believe in one is to deny the other. Fear is really nothing and love is everything. Whenever light enters darkness, the darkness is abolished. Whatever it is that you believe will be true for you. In this sense the separation has occurred and to deny it is merely to use denial inappropriately."  (T.2.VII.5.1-7)

To deny that there is a problem is not helpful. To be a Pollyanna and cover over the darkness with efforts at positive thinking is not helpful. To look for distractions to keep us from our sense of separation is not helpful. Is it wrong? Of course not. We just need to understand that it will not help to heal the mind when we are continually focusing our energy on distractions. We need to see  that there is a problem. Whatever thoughts or feelings arise, whether upsets, depression, discomfort, anger, or fantasies, need to be brought to awareness and then immediately turned over to the Holy Spirit.

With this kind of focus, we can actually learn to circumvent many of these feelings by setting our purpose which brings us to miracle-mindedness. That is why setting the intention for the day is very important. We can then keep our purpose in front of us throughout the day. In Chapter 30 "Rules for Decision", Jesus reminds us that we must realize that it is easier to have a happy day if we remember what question to ask and to hold our purpose in front of us throughout the day. It is much more difficult to regain peace than it is to just hold firm to  our goal. We've all experienced how hard it is to get out of a difficult frame of mind once it has set in.

So today we are asked to become aware of our doubts, our fears, our judgments, our grievances and own them, acknowledge them but recognizing that they are meaningless. This requires honesty and courage. I prefer to see the problem in you rather than see it in my own mind. I will defend my position, my perceptions, my choices, my expectations, my demands as being right. I will defend my version of the story as being correct. The ego is very subtle. We don't always see our motivations.  In fact we most often don't see our motivations. Sometimes when I do something that I consider helpful, and it is not seen that way, I will start to question my motivation.  So we can be truly grateful for the reflections of our own minds that we can choose to see  in the people and situations in the world. When we don't defend against them and do not take things personally but use these as a classroom for healing the mind, then everything that shows up is helpful. That is what time should be used for. When issues  come up  in our lives they can be experienced as very painful. Yet if we are committed to healing we need to allow what comes up to be what it is and allow others to be as they are. Anytime that we justify, it is the voice of the ego.  To simply surrender rather than to resist,  is to allow the Holy Spirit to do His work in shining our dark thoughts away. But He needs our cooperation.

The thoughts of misery and death seem real but they are not. They are of the ego thought system that we have come to believe. They are no more real than our fears as children, of the bogeyman under the bed. As long as we don't look there, they hold a lot of power. But when we turn on the light and look under the bed, we see there is nothing to fear. There is no bogeyman as there is no ego. It is nothing when we allow ourselves to look and be willing to ask with desire to experience God's love and protection which we have hidden from ourselves. Thus it is about transparency where there is nothing we want to hide. This is what enlightenment is.

Love and blessings,

Quotes in this article are from Foundation for Inner Peace edition; To locate the same quotes in the 'Original Edition', use this link:  http://www.jcim.net/acim_us/Acim.php    

A Course in Miracles   
TEXT  

Chapter FIFTEEN    

The Purpose of Time  

V. Practicing the Holy Instant                      

³⁵ This course is not beyond immediate learning unless you prefer to believe that what God wills takes time. And this means only that you would rather delay the recognition that His Will is so. The holy instant is this one and every one. The one you want it to be it is. The one you would not have it be is lost to you. You must decide on when it is. Delay it not. For beyond the past and future, in which you will not find it, it stands in shimmering readiness for your acceptance. Yet you cannot bring it into glad awareness while you do not want it, for it holds the whole release from littleness.

³⁶ Your practice must therefore rest upon your willingness to let all littleness go. The instant in which magnitude will dawn upon you is but as far away as your desire for it. As long as you desire it not and cherish littleness instead, by so much is it far from you. By so much as you want it will you bring it nearer. Think not that you can find salvation in your own way and have it. Give over every plan that you have made for your salvation in exchange for God's. His will content you, and there is nothing else that can bring you peace. For peace is of God and of no one beside Him.

³⁷ Be humble before Him and yet great in Him. And value no plan of the ego before the plan of God. For you leave empty your place in His plan, which you must fulfill if you would join with me, by your decision to join in any plan but His. I call you to fulfill your holy part in the plan that He has given to the world for its release from littleness. God would have His host abide in perfect freedom. Every allegiance to a plan of salvation that is apart from Him diminishes the value of His Will for you in your own minds. And yet it is your mind that is the host to Him.

³⁸ Would you learn how perfect and immaculate is the holy altar on which your Father has placed Himself? This you will recognize in the holy instant in which you willingly and gladly give over every plan but His. For there lies peace, perfectly clear because you have been willing to meet its conditions. You can claim the holy instant any time and anywhere you want it. In your practice, try to give over every plan you have accepted for finding magnitude in littleness. It is not there. Use the holy instant only to recognize that you alone cannot know where it is and can only deceive yourself.

³⁹ I stand within the holy instant, as clear as you would have me. And the extent to which you learn to be willing to accept me is the measure of the time in which the holy instant will be yours. I call to you to make the holy instant yours at once, for the release from littleness in the mind of the host of God depends on willingness and not on time. The reason why this course is simple is that truth is simple. Complexity is of the ego and is nothing more than the ego's attempt to obscure the obvious.

⁴⁰ You could live forever in the holy instant, beginning now and reaching to eternity, but for a very simple reason. Do not obscure the simplicity of this reason, for if you do, it will be only because you prefer not to recognize it and not to let it go. The simple reason, simply stated, is this: The holy instant is a time in which you receive and give perfect communication. This means, however, that it is a time in which your mind is open, both to receive and give. It is the recognition that all minds are in communication. It therefore seeks to change nothing, but merely to accept everything.

⁴¹ How can you do this when you would prefer to have private thoughts and keep them? The only way you could do that is to deny the perfect communication that makes the holy instant what it is. You believe that it is possible to harbor thoughts you would not share and that salvation lies in keeping your thoughts to yourself alone. For in private thoughts, known only to yourself, you think you find a way to keep what you would have alone and share what you would share. And then you wonder why it is that you are not in full communication with those around you and with God Who surrounds all of you together.

⁴² Every thought you would keep hidden shuts communication off because you would have it so. It is impossible to recognize perfect communication while breaking communication holds value to you. Ask yourselves honestly, "Would I want to have perfect communication, and am I wholly willing to let everything that interferes with it go forever?" If the answer is no, then the Holy Spirit's readiness to give it to you is not enough to make it yours, for you are not ready to share it with Him. And it cannot come into a mind that has decided to oppose it. For the holy instant is given and received with equal willingness, being the acceptance of the single Will that governs all thought.

⁴³  The necessary condition for the holy instant does not require that you have no thoughts which are not pure. But it does require that you have none that you would keep. Innocence is not of your making. It is given you the instant you would have it. Yet it would not be Atonement if there were no need for Atonement. You will not be able to accept perfect communication as long as you would hide it from yourself. For what you would hide is hidden from you.

⁴⁴ In your practice, then, try only to be vigilant against deception and seek not to protect the thoughts you would keep unto yourself. Let the Holy Spirit's purity shine them away and bring all your awareness to the readiness for purity He offers you. Thus will He make you ready to acknowledge that you are host to God and hostage to no one and nothing.

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