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.
Read ACIM Chapter 8, Section I (pages 138-139)
When we choose to believe that we are separate from the Love we are, we are contradicting our true nature. We experience conflict instead of the peace that is our natural condition. Peace is the condition of knowledge and knowledge is the experience of the beingness of God, the beingness of Love. God’s Will is only Love. Knowing Love and being Love are God’s Will.
Joining with the ego’s hallucinations is trying to do the opposite of God’s Will. The ego always sees conflict because the ego is the idea of separation from Love. When we believe in the ego, we believe in separate bodies with separate minds. This is in conflict with the oneness of the Love we are as God created us. When we join with the ego, we are throwing peace away. This is what the Course calls hell. The purpose for learning this Course is to return to peace. By teaching us to see the Love that every brother is, we learn that there is no cause for conflict because the hallucinations of the ego are not real.
We pay attention to the ego because we think it offers us something we want. The idea of being unique, independent and having something we can call our own appeals to us. The glitter of its appeal blinds us to the price we pay in seeking it. The price we pay is loss of peace because where there are differences, conflict is inevitable. The Course is helping us recognize the price of believing in specialness. As we learn to recognize that the cost of specialness is loss of joy and peace, it loses its appeal. When we no longer want it, it will be removed from our mind for us and the joy and peace of Heaven will return to our awareness.
The reason the Course seems to be difficult to understand is because we are trying to listen to two teachers. Since the two teachers are teaching completely opposite curriculums, one is like a foreign language to the other. The teacher that gives lessons in separation cannot comprehend oneness. Likewise the Teacher of oneness cannot comprehend separation.
Trying to understand both the Holy Spirit’s lessons of oneness and the ego’s lessons of separation is literally mind boggling. It leaves us feeling mentally immobilized. “Your reality is unaffected by both, but if you listen to both, your mind will be split about what your reality is.” (6:5) This confusion comes only because we think there is some value in separation, in having a unique and special identity we can call our own. If we saw no value in separation, we would simply disregard the ego’s lessons because they would be meaningless to us. Confusion would disappear and we would remember the Love that we are in God.
To experience miracles, we must be taught to realize that the idea of separation has no value to us and in fact is wholly undesirable. It never satisfies because it brings us only what we do not really want. Believing in separation does not make us happy. As we recognize this, we are motivated to learn the Holy Spirit’s curriculum that brings us peace instead of conflict, joy instead of despair.
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