A Course in Miracles Text Made Simple

To gain the most from A Course in Miracles Text Made Simple, we recommend that
you read the corresponding chapter and section in the Text of the Second or
Third Edition of A Course in Miracles published by the Foundation for Inner Peace.

Chapter 11: God or the Ego

Section IV: The Inheritance of God’s Son

Read ACIM Chapter 11, Section IV (pages 200-202)

Why does Jesus say that the Sonship is our salvation?

God is Love and Love extends. Love’s extension is the Sonship, which is our one Self. Being Love’s extension, our Self (the Sonship) remains one with Love. If we judge against any part of the Sonship, we lose awareness of Love’s oneness, because Love cannot be divided. “Yet if you hate part of your Self all your understanding is lost, because you are looking on what God created as yourself without love. And since what He [Love] created is part of Him, you are denying Him His place in His Own altar.” (1:6-7)

Love is one. If we deny any part of Love’s extension, we are denying what Love is and are denying our Father. When we deny our Father, we are trying to make God homeless. When we try to make Love homeless, it leaves us feeling homeless too, because God is our Home. When we forget about God we lose awareness of the Love and power God gave us. We feel lost in our dreams of separation from Love and wonder why God does not intervene to save us from emptiness and scarcity we experience.

Why does God not intervene in our dream of separation from Him?

Paragraph two explains why. In our creation God gave us all of Himself. That means the power we have is equal to His power; the Love we have is equal to His Love. We can dream of denying that power and denying that Love, but that does not change God’s gift. It only makes us unaware of It. If God were to interfere with our dream of denial of His power and Love, it would mean He no longer considers us to be one with His power and Love. He would have to see us as a lesser order of power. Then with His “greater power” He could reach into our dream and save us from our hallucination. He cannot do this because if He did, it would mean He has changed His mind about His gift to His Son and reserved a little “extra power” for Himself. But God held nothing back and He has not changed His Mind about us, for He is eternal and changeless.

So the way out of the dream is not to ask God to intervene and do for us what we must do for ourselves. The way out is to stop denying our inheritance, to stop denying the power and Love of God that we are. This means we need to learn to recognize the unreality of the dream. The Course is here to help us learn that and also to teach us how to hear the Voice of our inner Teacher, Who will always help us recognize the real and the unreal, if we but turn to Him. As we choose reality instead of illusion, we reclaim our inheritance, not by God’s intervention but by our acceptance of the Will we share with God. This Will we share with God is to be His power and Love. “Therefore, look only to the power that God gave to save you, remembering that it is yours because it is His, and join with your brothers in His peace.” (2:5)

What is really going on when we blame our brother for our deprivation?

Jesus is helping us see that if we judge and blame our brother for our deprivation, it is really ourselves that we are judging and blaming. Conversely, if we blame ourselves we are also blaming our brother because we are one. “That is why blame must be undone, not seen elsewhere. Lay [blame] to yourself and you cannot know yourself, for only the ego blames at all. Self-blame is therefore ego identification, and as much an ego defense as blaming others.” (5:3-5)

What is the world we see showing us?

Everything we see in an outside world is a reflection of what is in our own mind. The ego uses projection to hide the guilt that is in our own unconscious mind. To keep the guilt in place, the ego’s has us conveniently forget that everything we see in an outside world is really still in our minds. Projecting the guilt has not gotten rid of it. Jesus helps us understand that it is not “out there.” There is no difference between what appears to be without (our projections) and what is within. When we deny the Light in our brother, we are denying our own Light. The antidote is to learn to recognize the Light in our brothers and thereby recognize our own Light. We do this through forgiveness, or letting go of denying the Love of God in our brother.

What holds us back from going Home?

God welcomes us Home, but we cannot enter as long as we hold judgments against anyone. Condemnation is not of God because Love does not condemn. The Love of God is all inclusive, excluding no one. Likewise our love must be all inclusive if we would share the Home God holds open for us. “Sharing the perfect Love of the Father, the Son must share what belongs to Him, for otherwise he will not know the Father or the Son.” (8:3) As we awaken, our one goal is to share the perfect Love of the Father. That is how we accept the inheritance of God’s Son, the inheritance that is ours.

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