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Study of Text, Chapter 13: The Guiltless World, Introduction, P 1. 5-5-16

Chapter 13: THE GUILTLESS WORLD
Introduction, P1

1 If you did not feel guilty you could not attack, for condemnation is the root of attack. It is the judgment of one mind by another as unworthy of love and deserving of punishment. But herein lies the split. For the mind that judges perceives itself as separate from the mind being judged, believing that by punishing another, it will escape punishment. All this is but the delusional attempt of the mind to deny itself, and escape the penalty of denial. It is not an attempt to relinquish denial, but to hold on to it. For it is guilt that has obscured the Father to you, and it is guilt that has driven you insane.

Journal
I don’t think that I am the only one that has at some point questioned why it is that I have so thoroughly forgotten who I am and cannot remember my Father at all. When I wonder about that the ego warns that there is probably a good reason, and asserts that I am so evil that I dare not look within to find myself. When I doubt that I am all that evil, the ego quickly points out all my faults and reminds me of past behaviors of which I am not proud. It seems best not to look too deeply.

Then it warns that maybe I am hiding from my Father because I know He will condemn me for my evil. All we have to do is read the Old Testament to see how man has projected his fear onto God and sees God as vengeful, punishing and pretty scary. The ego says it’s best to leave well enough alone. Then it suggests solutions to this problem through projection, pointing the finger at someone else so I go unnoticed in my guilt.

And that is the real problem, guilt. I believe in guilt and from that one belief comes unworthiness, condemnation, punishment, fear, the need to be separate, and insanity. I feel guilty, and this makes me feel unworthy of love, and fearful of punishment. Ego’s solution of projection makes me believe that God is part of all this as I project the belief in guilt onto Him. Then I believe He is the ultimate source of punishment. I made of myself something with little resemblance to creation and then I reimagined God so that He was like me. Insanity.

Guilt has made so much fear in my mind that I see enemies everywhere I look, and thus I attack and defend against everyone and everything. I attack boldly and I attack in secret, sometimes so secret I don’t even tell myself I am attacking. I attack myself and I attack others. I even attack God. I feel like I must be in a constant state of defense because when someone attacks they expect to be attacked in return. There is a solution to this madness, and that is to understand that guilt is not real, and no one is actually guilty. There is no reason to attack and no one we need to

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Study of Text, Chapter 12, VII.The Attraction of Love for Love, P 8. 5-4-16

VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 8
8 The real world was given you by God in loving exchange for the world you made and the world you see. Only take it from the hand of Christ and look upon it. Its reality will make everything else invisible, for beholding it is total perception. And as you look upon it you will remember that it was always so. Nothingness will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly. Redeemed perception is easily translated into knowledge, for only perception is capable of error and perception has never been. Being corrected it gives place to knowledge, which is forever the only reality. The Atonement is but the way back to what was never lost. Your Father could not cease to love His Son.

Journal
We made the world we see, and when we are ready to let it go, God will give us the real world. All that we believe is real now will become invisible. Pain, suffering, guilt, fear, anger, jealousy, death, all will be invisible to us. The real world becomes visible to us as we accept correction of our perceptions. Our perception will be perfect so we will see perfectly, and redeemed perception is easily translated into knowledge.

As Jesus says in other parts of the Course, while we believe in the world, that is, while we believe in the ego, we strive for corrected perception, true perception. Once that is done, perception gives way to knowledge, and this is the return to God. Jesus wants us to understand that God was never lost to us because god would never cease to love us.

We think we have lost our place in Heaven because we don’t remember it, and we don’t see it. It is invisible to us, not because it is gone or because we are absent to it, but because we have blinded ourselves to it. Through accepting the Atonement we will open our eyes and see what has always been real. When we see reality, the illusion will not be seen.

It is helpful to know this, to be told that nothing is lost to us and that God still loves us. But it is necessary that we do the work that is needed to have our eyes opened. We must accept the Atonement. When I think about this I see it as choosing God over ego. I might use all sorts of processes to get myself to that point, but in the end, I simply decide for God.

This decision must be absolute for the ego to be undone, and so far I am still struggling with that decision. I know, it’s crazy, right? It would seem that the answer is obvious. Who wouldn’t trade in this painful existence for a blissful existence with no pain and suffering, with eternal life, where nothing is ever lost or lacking? Evidently, me. But every time I struggle through a situation, no matter how difficult it seems at the time, I come out of it changed. I have more clarity. My perception is closer to reality. I am closer than before to making that final choice for God.

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Study of Text, Chapter 12: VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 7. 5-3-16

VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 7
7 Yet it does not matter how much distance you have tried to interpose between your awareness and truth. God’s Son can be seen because his vision is shared. The Holy Spirit looks upon him, and sees nothing else in you. What is invisible to you is perfect in His sight, and encompasses all of it. He has remembered you because He forgot not the Father. You looked upon the unreal and found despair. Yet by seeking the unreal, what else could you find? The unreal world is a thing of despair, for it can never be. And you who share God’s Being with Him could never be content without reality. What God did not give you has no power over you, and the attraction of love for love remains irresistible. For it is the function of love to unite all things unto itself, and to hold all things together by extending its wholeness.

Journal
My reality can never be lost to me because the Holy Spirit holds that vision. He looks at me and sees only God’s Son. I want that vision badly. I want to think of myself and know I am only God’s Son and nothing else. I want to look on everyone else and see only God’s Son. The reason I have this desire is that I am, in truth, Love.

I am an extension of Love and Love is all that I am. As Jesus tells us, the attraction of love for love is irresistible. It is my function, as love, to unite all things to itself and to hold all things together. Therefore, I long to know myself and everyone else as love, to know Oneness. This is why A Course in Miracles is so attractive to me, and why it is that when I picked it up I kept reading. I kept reading even as I wondered why it was that I believed every word in it. Certainly there was no logical (ego) reason to do so.

And even though I believed it then, and even though I practice it continuously now, it still feels like it is slow-going, and sometimes it feels impossible to me. When it starts to feel impossible it is because I have endowed the ego with power it does not have. My mind is conflicted as I choose to move toward God and at the same time refuse to relinquish some old belief that is not truth. Conflict causes suffering and so I can get discouraged.

One reason I get discouraged is that I seem to be fighting myself. It’s hard to see a winner in that scenario. Another reason I get discouraged is that the inner conflict is not always apparent. When I don’t acknowledge that my problem is myself, I think it is real. I think that the problem occurs in the world and that I absolutely must do something about it. The problem can take on frightening dimensions when this happens, and seem to overwhelm me.

Sometimes, even when I finally let it go, I still get ego thoughts that I can’t just pretend the problem doesn’t exist. Then I feel a twinge of fear in my gut and I have to decide if I want to follow it to inevitable misery or turn away from it. The ego fear thoughts can be compelling. It seems to make so much more sense that the problem is not just going to go away, that I must do something.

But no matter what is going on in my story, and no matter how often I get pulled into the drama of it, nowadays, I always hear the Voice that tells me that this is not real. It might seem like a faint whisper next to the frantic warnings of the ego, but it is there, and that Voice has its own attraction. It is the attraction of love for love.

That attraction is very compelling, not in the frantic way of the ego, but in the clarity and certainty of its message. God’s Voice calls to the divinity in me, that is me. I may have disowned that divinity, but I have not destroyed it. So I answer. I do this again and again and it gets easier and I answer more confidently and I accept the truth more quickly. This is how I wake up, maybe slowly, but gently and inevitably.

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Study of Text, Chapter 12: VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 6. 5-2-16

VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 6
6 Son of God, be not content with nothing! What is not real cannot be seen and has no value. God could not offer His Son what has no value, nor could His Son receive it. You were redeemed the instant you thought you had deserted Him. Everything you made has never been, and is invisible because the Holy Spirit does not see it. Yet what He does see is yours to behold, and through His vision your perception is healed. You have made invisible the only truth that this world holds. Valuing nothing, you have sought nothing. By making nothing real to you, you have seen it. But it is not there. And Christ is invisible to you because of what you have made visible to yourself.

Journal

From the Daily Mail

The world you see around you is nothing but an illusion.
That’s according to cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman who claims we’re being tricked into believing our own reality.
He believes that what we are seeing around us is simply a façade that guides our way around a far more complex and hidden matrix.

Galileo once wrote: ‘I think that tastes, odors, colours, and so on reside in consciousness.

‘Hence if the living creature were removed, all these qualities would be annihilated.’

And Hoffman says, in some ways, he agrees with this statement.

‘Neuroscientists tell us that they are creating, in real time, all the shapes, objects, colours, and motions that we see,’ he said in a Ted Talk.

‘It feels like we’re just taking a snapshot of this room the way it is, but in fact, we’re constructing everything that we see.

‘We don’t construct the whole world at once. We construct what we need in the moment.’

This is exactly what we are doing. And what we see is actually in our minds. Through projection we give it the illusion of being “out there” but it goes nowhere because there is nowhere to go. We decide to see the impossible (separation) and so we do. But it seems we cannot believe in what we made, and at the same time see what is real.

Through the study and practice of A Course in Miracles, we are learning that this is what is happening, that we are through with the world we made up, and that we are ready to see what is real.

Jesus is telling us something very simple. He is saying that we see it because we value it. So in order to see reality, we only need to decide that the illusion of separation is not valuable to us, and we can let it go. Then what has always been there, but invisible to us because we wanted to see something else instead, will be made visible again.

Jesus has used the idea of a veil to help us understand. He said there is a thin veil between what we see and what is actually there. Have you ever peeked behind the veil? I have. I just haven’t made a permanent decision to recognize the veil is an illusion, too. I’m working on it though. I stay aware of the illusions I am most attached to and give my willingness to see through them to what is actually true.

I have done this one little idea at a time, but I think I am ready to let go some big chunks of the illusion. It feels hard sometimes because I become afraid. I’m not sure what it is I am afraid of; sometimes I think it is the fear itself. But I never stop giving it my attention and all the willingness I can.

I never make an exception. I might take awhile in letting go of an illusion, but I never refuse to try. There is no grievance, no false idea that I will refuse to confront. I will succeed, of course, because as Jesus says, I was redeemed the instant I thought I had deserted God.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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