A Course in Miracles Text Made Simple

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Chapter 7: The Gifts of the Kingdom

Section VI: From Vigilance to Peace

Read ACIM Chapter 7, Section VI (pages 123-126)

If we believe we are separate, are we rejecting God and the Sonship?

The truth is the Sonship is one with God, so if we reject or deny any part of It, we attack all of It, including ourselves since we are part of It. When we reject our oneness with the Sonship, which is also oneness with God, we are attacking the Sonship and God. When we believe attack is possible, we have joined with the ego throught system and fear is inevitable. Jesus tells us, “The ingeniousness of the ego to preserve itself is enormous, but it stems from the very power of the mind the ego denies. This means that the ego attacks what is preserving it, which must result in extreme anxiety.” (3:1-2)

Where did the idea of an angry and punishing God come from?

When we are in fear, we cannot know Love. What we believe we can do, we believe can and will be done to  us by other people and by God. We believe God has the same ability to attack what we believe we have, so we make an image of Him as a God Who can be angry and punishing. Our belief in attack makes us unable to recognize Love (God) and so we replace God with an image that has fearful attributes. With this belief, we do not see God as a Friend, but as an adversary to be feared because we believe God’s Will opposes ours.

This belief system has left us in utter confusion because we have lost awareness of the Love we are. We believe in a substitute image that is unreliable because it is made up and unreal. This instability can lead only to uncertainty and anxiety. “Your thinking has done this because of its power, but your thinking can also save you from this because its power is not of your making.” (2:5)

How do we reverse these insane ideas?

The good news is that we have the ability to direct our thinking. In order to return to peace, we must learn to accept the power of our thoughts. The ego does not want us to recognize the power of our thinking because it knows that if we do, we will choose against the ego by accepting our real power, which is the power of Love. We will realize the ego has no power of its own.

“Your ability to direct your thinking as you choose is part of [your mind’s] power. If you do not believe you can do this you have denied the power of your thought, and thus rendered it powerless in your belief.” (2:6-7) The ego does not want us to recognize the power of our thinking or that we have the ability to direct our thinking. Denying this ability keeps the ego in charge. As long as we continue to give allegiance to belief in separation, it will continue to reproduce fearful thoughts. Fearful thoughts deny Love, which is our real power. The power of Love gives us everything and the ego’s one goal is to keep us from realizing this. The moment we realize that Love gives us everything, we will reject the ego.

What does the ego do so we will forget about our ability to direct our thinking?

To guard against this, the ego tries to engage us in its delusional thought system. It does this by teaching us that we are a body, not mind. This hides the power of our mind and our real Identity from our awareness. “This ensures [the ego’s] continuance if you side with it, by guaranteeing that you will not know your own Safety.” (3:10)

What does the Light in our minds show us?

As we remember that our real power is in the Light in our minds, we will let go of belief in being powerless. The Light in our minds shows us that the whole ego thought system is meaningless because it is not true. Believing in illusions introduces conflict to our minds because it now seems that both reality and illusions are true. “When you believe something, you have made it true for you.” (7:7) When we try to hold opposing thought systems as both true, our mind becomes split, conflicted and confused. “The Holy Spirit does not want you to understand conflict; He wants you to realize that, because conflict is meaningless, it is not understandable.” (6:5) It is impossible to make sense of the world because it is made up of meaningless images of separation.

As we learn to align our thinking with the Holy Spirit, we are led to let go of the ego’s denial of the power of our thinking. We are led to let go of the fearful thoughts that produced the ego. Then we are able to appreciate God because we recognize that His Love is ours. We find joy in extending that Love to the whole Sonship.

How does the ego maintain the illusion of separation?

Its helpful to remember that the ego is the idea of separation. Because mind always reproduces as it was produced, the ego will always reproduce separation. It is impossible for the ego to perceive anything as part of it because the idea of separation is totally opposed to inclusion. Perceiving itself as an outsider, it always perceives everything else as outside.

The ego maintains this illusion by judging everything. This judgment may be as seemingly harmless as seeing one tree as different from another or as seemingly destructive as dropping an atomic bomb on a country perceived as wrong. Both are the same mistake because both are based upon the thought that what is perceived is separate from the perceiver. They are both based on the belief in the reality of separation. While belief makes it real to the believer, it cannot change the fact that every illusion remains illusion. Judgment is a principal defense of the ego because it holds the perception of separation in place.

What part of our mind remembers What we are and calls to us unceasingly?

Despite the ego’s dedication to separation and denial of the oneness of Love, there remains a part of our mind that remembers What created us and What we are. That part remembers we are Love, one with all Love. By denying It the ego makes this part of our mind seem unknown to us. Yet this part of our mind calls to us unceasingly because it is the call from our Self to awaken to Who we are.

Because Love is all that is real and Love is changeless, we cannot change What we are in truth. The call to return to Love can never be extinguished. It can be denied and ignored, but the call remains. This call, when it is heard and accepted, will mean the end of the ego, for it is the end of belief in separation. Thus the ego perceives an unknown adversary that it must constantly defend against to maintain its own existence. It does not know what this adversary is because the ego cannot know its opposite. But it does perceive a threat that must be guarded against.

Why does the ego keep our minds focused on forms and bodies?

By judging everything as a mechanism to maintain a sense of difference and exclusion, the ego maintains a veil to hide the awareness of Love from our minds. To make this veil seem real and impenetrable, it keeps our mind focused on forms and bodies. As long as we think bodies and forms are real without question, the ego thinks it is protected from the oneness of Love that would be its undoing.

How do we reverse this ego defense?

To reverse this ego defense, we must learn a way of thinking that focuses on the truth in our brothers by seeing past bodies and forms to the kind, loving and gentle Self that is the truth in everyone. We must let go of believing in the reality of any form. Because we made the forms through our allegiance to the ego thought system, we believe in them. To let them go we need Help from outside that belief system. That Help is the Holy Spirit, the Voice for God that speaks to us of the part of our mind that has never changed and remains as God created it.

Our vigilance is required to keep our attention on the Voice for God only because we have so long given our allegiance to the ego. As we practice listening to the Holy Spirit’s teaching, we will learn that nothing that the ego offers has any meaning or value. We will freely lay it down for we will see the value of the gift the Holy Spirit offers. It is the gift of God Himself. It is the gift of eternal happiness, perfect peace and Love without limit.

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