A Course in Miracles Text Made Simple

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Chapter 21: Reason and Perception

Section II: The Responsibility for Sight

Read ACIM Chapter 21, Section II (pages 448-51)

What is asked of us in order for us to be filled with peace and happiness?

We are asked to suspend judgment, which means to stop deciding on our own what reality is. We are asked to make room for and welcome the truth. We are asked to step aside from giving belief to a world of separate individuals, which is the opposite of God’s oneness. We are asked to let go of thinking that we are unique and different from Love’s oneness — that we are different from God’s united Love. We are asked to stop making up the world by deciding on our own what everything means. We are asked to realize that we are the same as God’s Love, and not different. Accepting eternal peace and happiness is the same as accepting that we are Love’s extension, and our Identity remains Love for eternity. We cease trying to change Love, but accept It as It is.

Jesus tells us, “All that is asked of you is to make room for truth. You are not asked to make or do what lies beyond your understanding. All you are asked to do is let it in; only to stop your interference with what will happen of itself; simply to recognize again the presence of what you thought you gave away.” (7:6-8)

How does the ego make it appear that what it wants is real?

The ego uses wishful thinking or the power of desire. Jesus tells us, “All that the ego is, is an idea that it is possible that things could happen to the Son of God without his will; and thus without the Will of his Creator, Whose Will cannot be separate from his own.” (6:4)

The ego is the wish for the experience of independence (separation) from God joined with the idea that we did not make up the world of separate bodies we perceive but instead, are the victim of circumstances which now are caused by something or someone else. The ego’s laws were set up to deny that we wanted to experience a world that was different from God, our Creator. Thus the ego’s story line makes it look like we were hurled from Heaven, and that it was not of our making. Jesus tells us, “This [the world of separate bodies] is the Son of God’s replacement for his will, a mad revolt against what must forever be. This is the statement that he has the power to make God powerless and so to take it for himself, and leave himself without what God has willed for Him. This is the mad idea you have enshrined upon your altars, and which you worship.” (6:5-7) This clearly describes the ‘authority problem’ Jesus speaks of so often in the Course.

As long as we continue to place our belief in the dream world of separate bodies is as long as we will suffer and feel deprived. Our experience of a suffering ‘self’ comes from our insane attempt to prove that we had nothing to do with making up the treacherous and difficult world that we see. Once we see this insane attempt to deflect responsibility for what it is, we can change our mind and let it go.

Why does Jesus ask us to assume responsibility for what we see?

As we assume responsibility for what we see, we are acknowledging our projections and being honest about what is really going on in our minds. As we take responsibility for the thoughts that are residing in our mind, we end the pattern of self-deceit and willingly give up the deceitful mechanism of hurling guilt onto a world that we thought was outside our mind. Jesus tells us, “Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done to you. Acknowledge but that you have been mistaken, and all effects of your mistakes will disappear.” (2:6-7)

We feel guilty for rejecting our Source. Seeing a world outside ourselves is an attempt to project this guilt onto something that we view as outside us. As we acknowledge that what we have been seeing has simply been a mistaken choice, we now have the opportunity to make another choice. “His power of decision is the determiner of every situation in which he seems to find himself by chance or accident. No accident or chance is possible within the universe as God created it, outside of which is nothing. Suffer, and you decided sin was your goal. Be happy, and you gave the power of decision to Him Who must decide for God for you.” (3:3-6)

How important is it to see the truth about every brother rather than see him as a separate body?

Jesus returns us to the truth when he tells us, “Yet the truth is you and your brother were both created by a loving Father, Who created you together and as one. See what ‘proves’ otherwise, and you deny your whole reality. But grant that everything that seems to stand between you and your brother, keeping you from each other and separate from your Father, you made in secret, and the instant of release has come to you. All its effects are gone, because its source has been uncovered. It is its seeming independence of its source that keeps you prisoner. This is the same mistake as thinking you are independent of the Source by Which you were created, and have never left.” (13:1-6)

As we return to accepting our Source as the truth about every brother instead of his separate body, we return to safety. We return to inner happiness and contentment. We return to God. We learn to ask ourselves, “Do I want to see God or something that is separate from God?” As we choose to recognize our Source in every brother we are choosing to return to peace, joy and happiness.

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