4-5-13
5 Nothing can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the Hands of his Father. By doing this the mind awakens from its sleep and remembers its Creator. All sense of separation disappears. The Son of God is part of the Holy Trinity, but the Trinity Itself is one. There is no confusion within Its Levels, because They are of one Mind and one Will. This single purpose creates perfect integration and establishes the peace of God. Yet this vision can be perceived only by the truly innocent. Because their hearts are pure, the innocent defend true perception instead of defending themselves against it. Understanding the lesson of the Atonement they are without the wish to attack, and therefore they see truly. This is what the Bible means when it says, “When he shall appear (or be perceived) we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”
It doesn’t really matter if I understand the Holy Trinity so I won’t dwell on that part. But I did find it interesting that he speaks of it as “They” and “levels” and perfect integration, which establishes the peace of God. He says it’s their single purpose that does this. This feels different than the idea of One that I have had.
The One is a They. Also, the “single purpose” attracted my attention because the Course emphasizes that we must join in a single purpose, and I now see why. The Holy Trinity are in perfect agreement within Itself. They share a single purpose. This is the peace of God. When we, you and I, share a single purpose we experience a holy instant and the practice brings us to the memory of the peace of God.
I do not experience the peace of God even though it exists uninterrupted by my dream of separation, because only the innocent remember peace. As long as I perceive guilt, I am blind to what is in me and all around me. This brings us to the part of this paragraph that is of greatest interest to me, because it is something I can understand and use. Guilt is the block that keeps me from the awareness of who and what I am. It keeps me from awakening. Guilt keeps me from remembering my Creator. So allowing guilt to be undone in my mind is my purpose while I imagine I am here.
The first sentence, “Nothing can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the Hands of his Father,” brought tears of relief to my eyes. As it echoes Jesus’ final surrender to His Creator, it awakens the desire within me to surrender. It reminds me that surrender to God is not a sacrifice. Surrender to my Father is an act of strength. If you think it does not take strength, try it while in the throes of an ego storm, while deeply mired in fear. And you need only do this once to know there is no sacrifice, but quite the opposite. To go from terror to peace in a single moment is not sacrifice.
Jesus says, the innocent defend true perception instead of defending themselves against it. I have a current example of this. Last night my daughter was upset and feeling very hurt. If it were myself that was feeling hurt and upset, I would move more easily into surrender, but when it is my kids, I have a harder time with it. I still do the work, but it takes me longer to get past the appearance and to the truth.
Within my mind was a true perception of the situation, but standing before me was my precious daughter who was apparently in pain. The part of the situation that was encouraging is that I recognized all of the ego thoughts for what they were. I felt bad (guilty) because I could not fix her problem. I felt helpless (guilty) because I did not know what to say and all of my wisdom was useless because she doesn’t believe in it.
I saw my mind going constantly to the world looking for a way to fix this problem. Boy, was there ever the desire to find a way to manipulate the world so that it was kinder to my daughter! I recognized this for what it was; defending against true perception, and so let it go each time. I guess the strongest defense against true perception was my belief that something was wrong and I needed to do something about it.
True perception showed me a daughter who was experiencing her wishes, and from that experience moving closer to awakening to the peace of God, but instead of defending that perception, I kept defending against it by sinking into her fear and believing in that. I also noticed that her fears triggered the same fears in me, fears I thought I had let go long ago.
All the time this was happening and later when I got home and sat with it, I was asking for the Atonement in this situation. I said that I accepted it, and yet I stayed in fear and uncertainty. Finally, I just gave in and cried about all the things that this situation brought up for me. I heard myself say, “This is how these thoughts make me feel.” Then I realized my error.
At first I was asking for the Atonement, but what I really wanted was to feel better. I was still defending against true perception and was not interested in letting go of what I believed. I was asking out of fear, or another way to say it, I was asking Jesus to take my fear away. He tells us that he cannot do this.
But he also says he can help us with the beliefs that cause the fear. Obviously, though, I will have to stop defending against him doing this, that is, I will have to be willing to let go of the beliefs that are causing the fear. This is when I become willing to commend (surrender for safekeeping) my Spirit to God. This is the moment of trust and faith.
The reason crying and telling Jesus how I felt was so helpful to me is that it was the moment I stopped trying to heal myself and really surrendered the problem. The Course says that we need to look at our thoughts with the Holy Spirit and let Him heal us. Before that moment I was trying to bypass the part where I really looked at them. I was apparently telling myself that I could just jump right to the healing without looking. I had looked in an intellectual way, but I didn’t want to feel the pain. Kind of like looking at a mess from a distance so I didn’t get my hands dirty. ~smile~
That moment of crying and really acknowledging how it feels to believe the ego (and so support the belief in guilt) and then asking for healing was what was required of me to truly receive the healing. I went from saying, “Yuck, this is awful. Take it away,” to saying, “Here is what it feels like to believe this false idea. I see this is not something I want to keep believing. Please heal my mind.” It seems a subtle difference but it is very different.
From a healed perspective I lost all desire to attack. I did not see the world as guilty of hurting my child and so I did not want to “attack” the problem in the world. I remembered the simple truth and now I hold that truth for her. I am defending true perception and no longer defending against it. Whew! It feels so freeing. Thank you, God. I love you, God.
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