A Course in Miracles Text Made Simple

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Chapter 14: Teaching for Truth

Section IX: The Reflection of Holiness

Read ACIM Chapter 14, Section IX (pages 291-292)

This section gives us the way to wake up from dreams of death and despair. It tells us, in very practical terms, the way to find true and everlasting happiness. Jesus says, “Bringing the ego to God is but to bring error to truth, where it stands corrected because it is the opposite of what it meets. It is undone because the contradiction can no longer stand.” (2:1-2)

How do we bring the ego to God?

We can’t bring illusion to truth ourselves because our belief in the thought system of the ego makes us blind to the truth. But we can recognize the symptoms of illusion — anger, fear, guilt and our belief in time and separate bodies — and we can bring all these thoughts to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit shows us their unreality and they disappear. The undoing of these false ideas is the undoing of fear, guilt and loss in our mind. The Holy Spirit replaces our belief in time with timelessness, which alone is true. Jesus tells us, “The making of time to take the place of timelessness lay in the decision to be not as you are. Thus truth was made past, and the present was dedicated to illusion.” (1:7-8)

Why were we born into a world of time?

We were born into a world of time because we made a decision to reject the timelessness of God. Yet that decision had no effect on reality. Our job now is to reverse the decision by allowing the Holy Spirit replace all our false ideas with the truth. This means stepping back from deciding what anything means on our own. At this stage, we do not know what reality is and have no true basis with which to discern illusion from truth. But the Holy Spirit in our mind does. The Holy Spirit leads us to see, “Different realities are meaningless, for reality must be one. It cannot change with time or mood or chance. Its changelessness is what makes it real.” (2:6-8)

What does Jesus tell us is the remedy to replace our false ideas?

We must be willing to step back and listen. We must be willing to receive the Holy Spirit’s thought reversal. Jesus tells us, “The past that you remember never was, and represents only the denial of what always was.” (1:10) At first this thought reversal process seems quite confusing to us. We are still holding on to what is not true but do not realize it. We think we already know what is true based on what we learned from the past. So we do not think to ask the Holy Spirit regarding many things we take for granted to be true.

The undoing process that the Holy Spirit leads us through is gentle and gradual. As we bring our false ideas to the Holy Spirit, His Light gently shines them away. “The Atonement is so gentle you need but whisper to it, and all its power will rush to your assistance and support. You are not frail with God beside you. Yet without Him you are nothing.” (3:2-4)

How do we become a clear reflection of Heaven?

As we continue this process of letting go of everything that we have believed in the past, we move towards becoming a clear reflection of Heaven. The dark images of illusion no longer interfere because we have withdrawn our faith in them. “Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection of Himself can be perceived upon it.” (5:4-7)

No matter what we believe we are, holiness remains unchanged within us. Yet the illusions we believe in block our awareness of this holiness. As we practice bringing all our problems to the Light of holiness, we clean the mirror of our mind. The Light of our holiness shines brighter and brighter for all to see. It is our function to share this healing Light with everyone. When we have learned to offer only healing, we are ready for Heaven. We have accepted the state of holiness that is the condition of Heaven. We know that we are truth.

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