To gain the most from A Course in Miracles Lesson Insights, we recommend
that you read the corresponding lesson in the Workbook of the Second or
Third Edition of A Course in Miracles published by the Foundation for Inner Peace.
“If I am bound, my Father is not free.”
I am bound by the laws of this world if I think I am a body, separate and unique from everything else. If I think I am a body, the laws of this world tell me that I am vulnerable and I must protect the body. To have value, the body must look good and I must adorn it with trinkets and baubles and stylish apparel. I must get pieces of paper and awards that say the body has performed well.
And so the “life” of this body is spent in seeking to get in order to have the value it does not seem to have on its own and in carefully defending and protecting what little value it has managed to acquire. This is what I believe my existence is for if I believe I am a body. When the Course is telling me the laws of this world do not apply to me, it is not telling me I can go on a wild crime spree. Such action could only be based on the belief that I am a body and subject to its limitations.
When I fully recognize that I am not a body, but remain God’s loving extension, subject only to His law of Love, the idea of taking and getting and attacking could not occur to me. No value could be seen in a world of form from the full awareness that Love is all that is real.
The way I free myself from bondage is to cease rejecting the Self that God created. By accepting my Self as God created me, I accept my Father as the Love He is. I no longer place limits on God nor my Self. I accept that I am Love and I see only Love, for Love is all there is to see. Thus I am free to be as I was created. I see only the face of Christ, the symbol of God’s Love, for I have forgiven all the mistaken images that I interposed between myself and my Father. I am not a body. I am free. I am still as God created me.
It all comes down to which thought system I want to hold on to. The ego thought system tells me I am bound by limitation, weakness and finally death. It tells me I am separate and alone, different from my brother and from God. This is the thought system I have joined with or I would not find myself in an illusionary world where separation appears to exist.
Now I am learning that there is a better way. There is a way out of believing in this world of separation I seem to be in. And the way out is through forgiveness, or being willing to lay down all the false beliefs I have bought into. As I cease to want to see a world of separation, a new pathway opens up to me. This pathway is brought to me as I ask for nothing but the truth.
As I continue to persist in quieting my mind and asking for the truth, the truth is given me in a way that I can understand in the moment. The Holy Spirit is called the Bridge. If I am willing, the Holy Spirit will take me by the hand and lead me past all the false ideas I have bought into and return me to the truth, step by step. The Holy Spirit’s infinite patience is very helpful when I need my lessons repeated many times. The Holy Spirit knows that, no matter what false ideas I dream, none of them are real.
Whenever I go to the Holy Spirit with any problem I seem to have, the Holy Spirit shows me again and again that the problem is always in my own mind and not outside myself. The Holy Spirit shows me how to change my mind and release the false ideas, and what was a mountain becomes a mole hill. The Holy Spirit shows me there is no world that is outside of me and gently guides me to return my mind to the Home I never left in reality. I only dreamed I was separate and alone. I only dreamed I was bound and limited. I only dreamed of a world of bodies.
Because the dreams appear to be so real to me, I need the Holy Spirit to help me gently awaken from them and realize they never happened. The Holy Spirit straightens out my mind and shows me that nothing but God’s eternal Love could ever truly be. I do not need to struggle and fight with false ideas, but merely lay them down because they are unreal. The Holy Spirit helps me do this when I am willing. The Holy Spirit shows me that the limitations I have believed in do not exist in reality.
The Holy Spirit shows me that I am in truth an extension of God’s Love. God’s Love is not bound by false ideas and neither am I as I am willing to let them go. The Holy Spirit shows me that this is a process and tells me that I need not feel guilty when I see that I have bought into illusions one more time. The Holy Spirit guides me each time I get caught by illusions to see their falsity and then let them go. The Holy Spirit brings me to a place of peace because peace is my Home. It is where I belong.
The Holy Spirit is my best Friend and everyone’s best Friend, as each is willing to lay down the false illusions of limitation and loss. Only changeless, eternal Love is real. It is our inheritance. Anything else is false and will be laid down. Truth is true and nothing else is true. God is. Love is.
Being alert to the laws of man that I still believe I am subject to is a demanding job. It is a comfort to remember that it is just a process and I don’t have to feel guilty when I forget.
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