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Gentle Healing Lesson 170, Text, Manual for Teachers. 10-20-19

LESSON 170
There is no cruelty in God and none in me.

Jesus begins by telling us that attack is an attempt to hurt and this is always true, whatever our justifications. We tell ourselves that we are just defending against harm when we attack, but Jesus says that this is cruelty and thus we believe that to be cruel is to be safe. I thought of an example to test this idea. I have attacked in the past. I will use my ex-husband as an example.

I didn’t feel like he put his family first, and so I felt unsafe with him. I would defend myself by using guilt and shame to change his behavior thinking that if he understood the harm he was doing to us and ultimately to himself, then he would change. Because I was so caught up in my story of victimhood, I failed to see that he was not the problem and that I could simply change my perception of the situation and restore peace to my mind.

I really believed that he was the problem and the solution was to attack him. I did not see that I had made changing him my salvation, the idol I was worshipping. It was a cruel and relentless god that I was bowing to and nothing good came from it. I only felt guiltier myself and he became more stubborn in his determination to live as he chose to live.

Attacking him and making him my enemy left me feeling afraid and vulnerable because who can attack can also be attacked. It increased my belief that I could both love and hate and this is not possible. Either love is real or hate is real. They cannot both be true and these opposing ideas were a continuing war in my mind. My failure to forgive demanded constant justification and so the war escalated. And having an enemy seemed to prove separation was real. The lack of peace in my home was a reflection of the lack of peace in my mind.

“For fear becomes your safety and protector of your peace, to which you turn for solace and escape from doubts about your strength, and hope of rest in dreamless quiet.”

The way this was manifested in my marriage was that I projected onto our relationship this belief that fear is my salvation and attack is my defense. Now my husband was my enemy and I had to protect myself through attack. It seemed that to lower my defenses in the name of love was to bare my neck to the sword, so to speak. If love demanded this of me, then love must be my enemy.

Jesus says we need to look at this dynamic and that it might seem fearful to us to do so, but it will also be our time of release. I did do this finally and having waited until I was divorced to do so, made it a little easier. I had some distance to give the illusion of safety, and there was not the constant reinforcement of the perceived need to defend.

Because we worked at the same job, there was just enough interaction to help me see the mistaken thoughts in my mind without overwhelming me. Probably now, with this success and others, I would be able to heal without divorcing myself from the problem, but at that time, it was a necessary component of healing.

My marriage and my divorce were only symbols of the one problem, as are all facets of the illusion. The deeper meaning the marriage symbolized was my war with God. God, Who is Love, is seen as enemy and is feared. All fear in the world is a reflection of the fear of God. We have the belief that fear protects from what would hurt us and so fear becomes salvation in our mind, and love which would strip us of the protection is now seen as the enemy.

But just as I learned that I could see my relationship with Greg differently and come to love him without fear of that love, so can I do the same with God. I think I have divorced God just as I divorced Greg even though ideas cannot actually leave their source. I pretend I am separate from God just as I pretended that the idea of relationship with Greg would be separate from me through divorce, and that I could make separation real through assigning error to an other I see as outside me.

I was able to overcome the belief I could sever my relationship with Greg simply by moving my body away from his body. And so I will overcome that same belief in my relationship with God, that pretending to be in a body that exists outside God actually accomplishes separation. Ideas leave not their source and love is not fear. These are truth, and there are no opposites to truth.

Text
X. the Time of Rebirth, P 8
8 You think that everyone outside yourself demands your sacrifice, but you do not see that only you demand sacrifice, and only of yourself. Yet the demand of sacrifice is so savage and so fearful that you cannot accept it where it is. The real price of not accepting this has been so great that you have given God away rather than look at it. For if God would demand total sacrifice of you, it seems safer to project Him outward and away from you, and not be host to Him. To Him you ascribed the ego’s treachery, inviting it to take His place to protect you from Him. And you do not recognize that it is what you invited in that would destroy you, and does demand total sacrifice of you. No partial sacrifice will appease this savage guest, for it is an invader who but seems to offer kindness, but always to make the sacrifice complete.

Journal
You think that everyone outside yourself demands your sacrifice, but you do not see that only you demand sacrifice, and only of yourself.

What is the sacrifice I demand of myself? I demand the sacrifice of God and of Self. In choosing this experience of separation and clinging to the ego mind, I sacrifice the memory of What I am and of my relationship to my Creator. Within the story, I sacrifice happiness, and health. My efforts to place the blame elsewhere only succeed in causing further self-sacrifice.

For if God would demand total sacrifice of you, it seems safer to project Him outward and away from you, and not be host to Him.

The ego does, indeed, demand total sacrifice. It would leave you without recourse to suffering and death. But in our confused state, we think that it is God that demands total sacrifice of us. No wonder there is such a strong fear of God and no wonder we try to push Him away and see Him as separate and outside of us. We are holding the real enemy close and pushing away Love.

I’m trying to think how all of this applies to my life. When I awakened, any belief in the world I had left was gone. I know, no think or believe, but know that this world and the experience of the world that I seem to be involved with is an illusion. It is imagination. I know for a fact that it feels real only because we decided to make it feel real.

I also discovered that this shift did not cost me anything. I didn’t sacrifice anything to God in order to be where I am now in my experience. The ego is a stalker, though. Like a boyfriend who will not accept that the relationship is over, the ego follows me around trying to entice me back into some of our old behaviors.

For instance, the ego says I should worry about someone I love. It says that worry is a sign of love and not to worry is weird. I see myself looking at that idea but I can’t go back there. I know too much, now. This is the kind of ego belief I had to sacrifice in order to be happy.

I had to give up making decisions with the ego and I had to relinquish making others guilty, even making myself guilty had to be sacrificed. The ego insists that I need these things and that they are being taken away from me. The ego says that I will miss them. But thus far, I haven’t found that to be true.

I like the trade-off. Instead of fear and guilt, I have peace and happiness. Instead of death, I have Life. Instead of competition and loneliness, I have love. That doesn’t feel like a sacrifice to me. And the Holy Spirit is helping me to see the bits that I have not released yet so that I can be entirely free.

WHO ARE GOD’S TEACHERS? P3 & 4
3 There is a course for every teacher of God. The form of the course varies greatly. So do the particular teaching aids involved. But the content of the course never changes. Its central theme is always, “God’s Son is guiltless, and in his innocence is his salvation.” It can be taught by actions or thoughts; in words or soundlessly; in any language or in no language; in any place or time or manner. It does not matter who the teacher was before he heard the Call. He has become a savior by his answering. He has seen someone else as himself. He has therefore found his own salvation and the salvation of the world. In his rebirth is the world reborn.

4 This is a manual for a special curriculum, intended for teachers of a special form of the universal course. There are many thousands of other forms, all with the same outcome. They merely save time. Yet it is time alone that winds on wearily, and the world is very tired now. It is old and worn and without hope. There was never a question of outcome, for what can change the Will of God? But time, with its illusions of change and death, wears out the world and all things in it. Yet time has an ending, and it is this that the teachers of God are appointed to bring about. For time is in their hands. Such was their choice, and it is given them.

Here is what I have learned so far about being a teacher of God.

His qualifications consist solely in this; somehow, somewhere he has made a deliberate choice in which he did not see his interests as apart from someone else’s.

Everyone is called but few answer at this time though everyone will answer eventually.

There is a course for everyone and they vary greatly but this one teaching doesn’t change:  “God’s Son is guiltless, and in his innocence is his salvation.”

It doesn’t matter who the teacher was before his call.

We teach in many ways, with words or without words. The path for each person is very specific.

A Course in Miracles is a special form of a universal course. There are thousands of paths all designed to save time because the world is weary and we have caused ourselves much suffering.

There was never a question of outcome, for what can change the Will of God?

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