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Chapter 5: Healing and Wholeness

Section III: The Guide to Salvation

Read ACIM Chapter 5, Section III (pages 78-80)

What does it mean to recognize the Holy Spirit in every brother?

Becoming aware of the Holy Spirit in our brother is the same as becoming aware of the Call for God in him. Because, in truth, we are all part of God, healing is returning to the truth of our one Identity as Love, which is What God is and What we are. The healing of our minds is accomplished as we open to sharing this one truth of our oneness with God. This idea of sharing the truth is the Holy Spirit. “The Holy Spirit is the idea of healing. Being thought, the idea [of our oneness] gains as it is shared. Being the Call for God, it is also the idea of God.” (2:1-3)

Here we are learning that the Holy Spirit is thought. The Holy Spirit is the Idea of God. This Thought or Idea is in everyone’s mind, right now, even though they may have dissociated from this Thought.

Because we have chosen to experience something other than being an Idea in the one Mind of God, we have dissociated from the Call for God, or the Holy Spirit. Because of this dissociation, the way we return to our true State is to see the Call for God in every brother, because when we see It in our brother, we are strengthening It in ourselves. As we strengthen the Call for God in ourselves, we become more aware of It. “See him through the Holy Spirit in his mind, and you will recognize Him in yours. What you acknowledge in your brother you are acknowledging in yourself, and what you share you strengthen.” (3:4-5)

Here we are being told one of the most important keys to experiencing eternal happiness. Seeing the Holy Spirit or the Call for God in our brother is our way Home. It is the path to our awakening to the truth of our one Identity. Seeing the truth in our brother is the key to our to salvation and returns the strength and joy of God to our awareness. What can be more important than this?

We can’t underestimate the importance and value of what Jesus is telling us in this section. We are being told how to consistently receive insight from the Holy Spirit — As we join with the idea that the Holy Spirit is in everyone, we strengthen it. In truth, we share the Holy Spirit with everyone because the Holy Spirit is in everyone’s mind. It is the part of our mind where truth lies.

In section one of this chapter, we were told that the Holy Spirit is “Universal Inspiration.” As we learn to see the Holy Spirit or the Call for God in every brother’s mind, the truth is strengthened in our mind. This is how we strengthen our ability to hear the Voice of the Holy Spirit. We must look for the Holy Spirit in everyone. What we look for we will find if we truly want to see it. “If you make the mistake of looking for the Holy Spirit in yourself alone your thoughts will frighten you because, by adopting the ego’s viewpoint, you are undertaking an ego-alien journey with the ego as guide.” (4:6)

The Holy Spirit is weak in us because we have forgotten to share the Holy Spirit with our brother. We have forgotten to look for the Holy Spirit in every brother’s mind. The Holy Spirit is still there in everyone’s mind, but we have just not been focusing on it. Now is the time to remember that the Holy Spirit is there. We get what we focus on. We get in touch with the Holy Spirit in our mind when we get in touch with the Holy Spirit in our brother’s mind.

Why is the ego so fascinated with conflict?

The ego thrives on conflict because it perceives peace as a threat. You may have heard the saying that, when things are going well, “I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop” or “It’s too good to last.” These ideas come from the ego’s fascination with conflict. When things are too happy and too peaceful for the ego, it will bring in an idea or a circumstance to disrupt this state so that it can have the conflict that it feeds on so ravenously.

Entertainers know this. Many popular songs express anxiety and conflict in some way. Television and movie script writers know that to keep the audience’s attention, there must be some sort of conflict in the script. The popularity of thriller movies is a testament to the ego’s fascination with fear and conflict. All this feeds the ego’s need to make separation appear real and irreversible.

Without separation, there can be no conflict. Since separation is an illusion, belief in it must be constantly reinforced to keep the perception of separation in place. We do this for ourselves in the stories we tell ourselves about our lives. It is so ingrained in our belief system that we are not even aware of the choices we make that insure the continuation of strife and conflict in our lives. It has become an unconscious habit. We have hidden it so well in our unconscious mind that we believe we have no responsibility for the things that seem to happen to us to disrupt our peace.

Yet everything we perceive is a projection from our own mind and simply reflects the beliefs we hold. Because we have hidden these beliefs well in our unconscious mind, we need help from a Source that does not believe the stories we tell ourselves. This is the Holy Spirit. He recognizes our stories but, because He does not believe them, He can lead us out of them. He uses the language of our stories and gives them a new interpretation that leads us to the recognition of the one Self we share with all. He leads us to the recognition of the Love we share with God. The Holy Spirit is our Guide out of the ego’s hellish stories of fear and conflict and back to the Heaven that is our Home.

How does the Holy Spirit uno the ego?

Because we made the ego and have identified with it as what we are, all of our thinking is based on the ego thought system. We believe it is real and anything not consistent with the ego’s ideas of separation is rejected as untrue and unreal. If it does not fit the ego’s thought system of separation, it is not understandable to us. Thus the unity of God is not understandable and we don’t believe it could be real. That is why we need the Holy Spirit, Who knows the reality of God’s oneness, yet can work with the symbols and images of the ego to help us move beyond the limited realm of the ego thought system. Thus He reinterprets the ego’s image making, bringing it to the Light of His understanding.

The idea of danger and strife is very appealing to the ego because it reinforces the seeming reality of time and space. It reinforces the reality of an outside foe to be defended against and battled with. Because the Holy Spirit is the opposite of the ego, the Holy Spirit always brings our mind to peace and the truth of our safety in the eternal now. Gradually He leads us to recognize that we are not only not alone, but could never be alone. With His gentle guidance, we learn to see our brother as one with us in Love, with no differences of any kind. The Holy Spirit teaches us by using the symbols and language we have learned from the ego and gives them a new interpretation that leads towards unity instead of separation. “He can therefore perform the function of reinterpreting what the ego makes, not by destruction but by understanding.” (7:4)

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