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.

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Chapter 3: The Innocent Perception

Section VI: Judgment and the Authority Problem

Read ACIM Chapter 3, Section VI (pages 46-49)

What is the effect of judgment?

Judgment is used to decide what we want to include and exclude from our awareness. That is why perception happens through judgment. Judgment is the mechanism we use to attempt to define our own reality and always involves rejection. We are attempting to usurp God’s Authority by redefining His Creation according to our own desire to see unique images of separation and make up individuality.

We are capable of denying what we choose to exclude to the point that we are unaware of its presence, though it is all around us. That is why we are unaware of God’s Love. In order to be unaware of God’s Love surrounding us, we must actively judge against It and deny It. The constant effort this requires is tiring.

We believe that judgment has power. Because we have used judgment to make God unknown to us, we are afraid of the power of judgment. We then fear that judgment can be used against us to send us into oblivion, just as we have sent God’s universal Love into oblivion, making it unknown to us.

If we believe the ego’s judgmental thought system is our own, we do not want to be aware of knowledge because perception would disappear and the whole world we have made would disappear with it. “In the presence of knowledge all judgment is automatically suspended, and this is the process that enables recognition to replace perception.” (3:6) We would recognize our Self as God created us and realize that all that we made through perception does not really exist.

What Is the Authority Problem?

We have an authority problem when we think that it is up to us to decide what Reality is. In truth we have been created by God as part of Himself. We are part of His Identity and have all that God is because we are all that God is. In God, having and being are the same. We can’t be an entity separate from God. Only in mad delusions can we think that this is so. “Everyone is free to refuse to accept his inheritance, but he is not free to establish what his inheritance is.” (10:2) Because God is our Author, He determines our reality. Only in illusions can we seem to make a different reality. Attempting to perceive a different reality through judgment is the authority problem.

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