(Paper 1295-29)

The next step is to realize that you HAVE a mind, and that it is split between insanity (wrong mind)) and serenity (right mind).

Next to realize that it is YOUR choice, and ONLY yours as to which part of your mind you will be in at any time.  Know that we always swing back and forth from one to the other, that this is a necessary part of our learning process.

Recognize the difference.  Where am I right now?

Know that living in your wrong mind brings you pain.
Know that living in your right mind brings you peace.
Decide which you want to experience.

Since your brother is your mirror, it is necessary to look into him to see yourself.  That is the purpose for being in relationship.  To see the beauty and then the pain, know the difference, and see that it comes from your awn mind.

Everything you experience is a condition of the mind and is simply a thought in our mind that there can be something other than What We truly are.  Holy Spirit is a thought in our mind, which is our remembrance of God, our Self as The Christ and Heaven, our normal condition.

It is the ego’s purpose to keep us “out of our mind” as much as possible, and so sometimes to provide us with mindless situations to experience, keep us busy and unable to look at the sane part of our mind.  It is Holy Spirit’s purpose to provide that quiet place where we can remember What we are.

Try saying in group in unison:
“I believe in sane thoughts.”
“I believe in sane thoughts.”
“I believe in sane thoughts."
“I believe insane thoughts.” <<<---------------- Notice the subtle switch.
“I believe insane thoughts.”

You will project what you are, so how you see others is what you believe, feel and see about yourself.

The gullible give money to be told the Truth they already know.  Gurus and organizations will sell “holy” words and “holy” places to those who would be duped into seeing “royal robes and palaces” of nothing.  God’s Word is not for sale.

“A hostile mind sees a hostile world.”  Seekers, teachers, and unhealed healers (about all of us) will explain truth as influenced by their own backgrounds.  One who comes from a tradition of suffering, sacrifice, and guilt will necessarily focus on murder and forgiveness.  One who comes from a more loving and peaceful place, will focus on Love.

To the tormented mind, forgiveness is the answer; to the serene mind, Love is.

- LOVE is allowing everything to be just as it is.
- Smile kindly on it (bless it) and let it be.
- Know that at some level it has to be so.
- It is a necessary step in the realization of SELF.

The beauty, the pain, the suffering, the judgment are all necessary parts of realizing not themselves, but what we really are.  I have to live it all; no matter how long it takes.  What are a few lifetimes to eternity?  It’s O.K.  We have all chosen what and where we need to be this time for our own personal path to Atonement.  That is, to be back to the certain knowing of what and where we are forever.

The world’s a very busy place.  It is the manifestation of Mind proving to itself what It is.  There are an infinite number of “parts” (all the people) over infinite “time” (all the years) all individually proving this, in whatever way they have chosen at any particular time.  So, of course, it is confusing, busy, and appears insane.  But it all has a definite purpose.  Each will finish his search for him Self as he proves enough to himself, “comes to himself”, and reaches the peace, tranquility and oneness of his own personal “Real World”.

The story is told of a Western traveler in darkest Africa who wandered into a jungle clearing with a portable radio under his arm.  He set the radio down, turned it on to a news broadcast and retreated to the underbrush to see what would happen.  After awhile, some primitive native warriors warily approached the sound.  Some of the braver, having circled the strange apparition, came closer to peer inside to look for the man who was speaking.  Tipping their heads first this way, then that, not being able to see the man or understand how his voice could be coming out of the box, they raised their clubs and beat the radio to pieces.  Now returned to the quiet and normalcy of their jungle home, they again retreated to its darkness and resumed their former lifestyle.

We are those warriors.  Given the chance to listen to our inner guidance, we can’t understand how it operates, or where it comes from, so we turn it off; ignore our “radio” and retreat to the darkness of our own familiar ego world.

But guess what?  Even though we turned it off, our Truth is still being broadcast because we didn’t affect the transmitter.  It is still broadcasting and is everywhere, all the time.  There is nowhere it does not extend, being like a frequency and not of physical form or space at all.  You can’t see it or define it.  It just is.  Well, God, The Christ (Us) and Heaven are the transmitter.  The only way They could stop broadcasting, is if They weren’t there at all.  And that is impossible because there IS nothing else, and They are not going to destroy Themselves.  Tune in and listen.
 

RIGHT MIND  Home of Being  (Reason)  INNOCENCE

WRONG MIND  Home of Consciousness  (Judgment)  GUILT

A teacher of God is here only to represent the Alternative.
 (to the dream).

So the “YOU” that is being addressed by ACIM© is that perfect, complete and eternal part of our “mind” that is referred to as our “right mind” or “spirit mind”.  While we listen to ACIM© with our ego mind, we will never understand its message.

Obviously, we are not going to totally eliminate our ego while we are still in our world (or think we are), so we must always be aware that we have these two minds and listen to ACIM© only with our “right mind.”  Since we have the free will to decide which of our minds we will be in at any time, it is up to us to “choose once again” and hear what is really being said.  The part of our mind that does this choosing may be called “our decision maker,” and represents that choice within our mind.  Once having made that decision, we then “listen” to our guidance (either our Holy Spirit or our ego) and let either of our minds guide us.

When ACIM© addresses “you” as being perfect, complete, etc.  it is speaking TO our right mind.  When ACIM© tells “you” what you are doing or thinking from your ego, it is speaking about your wrong mind.

After several years of studying the Course, I find it easier to get the sense of who is being addressed, if I translate the right-minded “you” as YOU, and the wrong-minded “you” as you.  ACIM© never tells you where it shifts from one you to the other, so it is necessary to pay attention to the content of any particular statement, and decide which “you” is being addressed, and consequently should be listening.

So, it would seem that the serious, lengthy, and sometimes difficult process to finding our Self is: -

1. Study and understand ACIM© thought and theory, both LEVEL I and LEVEL II.

2. Accept the Truth of this thought for ourself.

3. Begin the long and arduous application of its principles including: -

a) Forgiveness of ourself for what we thought of others.
b) Seeing only The Christ in our brothers.
c) Extending the Love that we are.
d) Listening to and following the guidance of our own Holy Spirit.
e) Maintaining our Happiness and Peace throughout it all.

You will never find it, if you never start it.
You will never find it, if you don’t keep at it.
Above all else, you will never find it, if you don’t make the commitment.

In considering the following thoughts, the student should first read each paragraph in “The Laws of Healing” section.  It will then be seen how each thought pertains to its paragraph.

It begins, “This is a course in miracles,” and goes on to list and explain what must be recognized and done before total healing of our mind can be accomplished, which is the purpose of ACIM.  I have listed 17 “laws”, although more are certainly possible, depending upon the mind of the student.

1. “All sickness comes from separation.”  ACIM© says that all sickness, mental, emotional, or physical is caused by our mind and its thoughts.  Therefore, when every thought of separation from our true Reality as The Christ has been let go of, we will automatically be healed, as there is then nothing left to be “sick.”

2. “Guilt asks for punishment.”  Guilt can be any thought of being anything at all outside of our Self as The Christ.  This includes anything we do, say, or think outside of God.  Once guilt has been perceived, it will set up fear and automatically call for punishment because something is terribly wrong.  We are encouraged to get very still, go deeply inside, and re-discover the presence of our own Perfect Self.  In that quiet place does our Holy Spirit, our Guide and Counselor, abide to show us the way Home.  Our prayer should NOT be, “Bring me Your Peace and Love,” but rather, “Help me see what mistakes I am making that are keeping me from seeing Our perfect Love and Peace.”

3. Perception’s laws are opposite to truth.”  Truth is of Knowledge, God, and Heaven.  Truth is unmovable, eternal, and constant.  But perception has its own “laws,” insane but diabolically clever as set up by our ego.  These “laws” include the laws of chaos, but also are much more, governing everything we do and think outside of our true Christ Consciousness.  God’s Answer is the Holy Spirit, placed in each of our minds (as we now perceive it) while we dream of separation.

4. “God’s Answer lies where the belief in sin must be.”  Since we believe we are in a body, in a world and our mind is with us, then, therefore, the Holy Spirit must be within us too.  So He is in our minds within the “illusion of reversal” we have made.

5. “It is impossible that one illusion be less amenable to truth than all the rest.”  There are no degrees of truth in illusions.  They are all false and therefore all the same.  They have but one cause and one correction.  We have forgotten what we are.  We think we are something else.  Having made it, we must now defend it as “our truth,” our reality.  The one correction is to wake up to what and where we still are and have always been.

6. Sin is not error.  The word SIN in ACIM© means separation.  Try substituting the word “separation” when “sin” is used and see if it’s meaning is not re-enforced.  Any thought or demonstration of being separate from any of our brothers, our Self as The Christ, or God.  In our present ego existence we demonstrate this almost continuously, every day.  Think about it.  Can you honestly say that you don’t?  The correction for this perceived “sin,” this “separation,” is to realize we make it, not God.  The answer is to wake up to this fact and the realization that it never really happened.

7.  “- Truth needs no defense to make it true.” The illusion we have made within our minds is not real, has no substance, and is only many descriptions of nothing.  It has no more reality than pictures on a movie screen or ominous shadows after dark.

8.  “Forgiveness is the only function here.”  We have made our bodies to be the symbols of our separation.  Our little individual islands of fear in the sea of despair.  Forgiveness to ourselves and all others is the means by which we see that neither we nor they are responsible for what we, ourselves, have made and eventually, that it never really happened at all.  ACIM© explains to us that death is not an end to our temporal experience here, this time, but rather that we “died” unto our Self when we thought we had separated from our true Self in Heaven.  It is as though 1% of ourself “broke off” from the other 99%, which still and always exists, in perfect peace and completeness in Heaven.  Now believing we have “accomplished the impossible”, we forget all about the other 99% of us, and think that the 1% is all that is and who we truly are.  Forgiveness is a wish that what is, is.  Salvation is simply the acceptance of this fact, this eternal truth.  When this has been totally accepted, forgiveness will no longer be needed, as we will then be in the Real World of our right mind and be fully conscious that we are one with the Christ Mind.

9. - What you HAVE is what you ARE.”  Each one of us was created perfect and complete as the one Thought, at one “time”.  In that, we are one.  The “you” that ACIM© speaks to, is this One Mind, which manifests to us a vague “memory”  - yet not quite remembered.  We meet it when we let the noise and confusion of our ego world go, and return to that quiet place within us.  There, we begin to experience what we ARE and that we already HAVE everything.  God only creates the perfect, complete and eternal.  To see ourselves as anything less is the greatest blasphemy ever.  We are basically telling God that He is crazy, we are not perfect, so He is wrong.  This is the epitome of arrogance.  Of our attempt at separation and a place of our own specialness, ACIM© says, “He would sacrifice his own Identity with Everything, to find a little treasure of his own.  And this he cannot do without a sense of isolation, loss and loneliness.”

10.  “Sin (separation) is belief attack can be projected outside the mind where the belief arose.” “This world is an attempt to prove your innocence, while cherishing attack.”

We first make the belief in separation real, then project its effects out on our brothers, making them responsible for what we ourselves made and now blame them for.  Forgiveness is a process of taking that perception back inside our own mind, which was its cause, there looking at it calmly and quietly with the help of our own Holy Spirit, and then just letting it go.  If we are “too nice” a person to project it onto others, we will project it onto our own body (the manifestation of our ego) and make IT sick, either mentally, physically, or both.

11.  “Cause and effect are one, not separate.” Our minds are very powerful.  We can be just as creative in insanity as we can be in Truth.  We have free choice, given us in our Creation, and can choose to be in either fear or Love in each and every instant of our lives.  But it must be a continuous conscious choice.  There is no sin (separation), just “mistakes” in thought we make, which (with the help of the Holy Spirit within us) can be corrected.  ACIM© says, “My brother, choose once again.”

12. “The miracle is possible when cause and consequences are brought together, not kept separate.”  This is why we are told that we must bring our perceived problems to the Light so that the light can shine them away.  We cannot ask that the Light come into our problems, for that would only make the Light part of the problem.  When the darkness of our fears and beliefs has been shone away, we will recognize we are the Perfect Child of God we always were.  A tiny sacrifice or sense of loss is no different than a huge one, as sense of loss or sacrifice is the belief we are not totally whole, complete and eternal.

13.  “Illusions serve the purpose they were made to serve.”  Illusions, although begun in innocence as a search for our “specialness,” end up in fear, lack and an attack upon God and His Kingdom.  From this comes the sense of being alone and lost and eventually fear of being “punished” for having these ideas in the first place.  Into this “hopeless and closed learning situation” comes the Holy Spirit with His lessons of love and forgiveness.  He can take any situation we have made and turn it around to be a lesson in our remembering.  But He can’t do it without our choice, willingness, and co-operation.  Such is the miracle of changed perception.  The miracle but calls your ancient name; and as you hear, you will remember.  “Each instant is the Son of God reborn until he chooses not to die again.”

14.  “In crucifixion is redemption laid.”  Redemption is brought to wherever crucifixion is seen.  But “it is but yourself you crucify”, and we have to see that we are doing it to ourself first.  “To you to whom it has been given to save the Son of God,” (and that is ALL of us), from crucifixion and from hell, “(our world)” and death “(not being in our Christ Mind in Heaven)”, all glory be forever.”

- “In your hands does all salvation lie, to be both offered and received as one.”  To have ALL, give ALL to ALL.

15.  “To use the power God has given you as He would have it used is natural.” You are Love.  Made of Love by Love.  To extend the Love that you are is natural.  Not to extend it sets up blocks and fears that will make you sick, mentally and physically.  Healing is not done outside your Mind, but within it.  The Power that is within You is total and limitless.  All you need do is recognize it and use it.  There is “- no problem which is not resolved within its gracious Light.”

16.   “There is no difference among the Sons of God.” At a level of Holy Mind, we are all the same because we are all One.  “Abide in peace, where God would have you be” is a statement of absolute Unity and absolute loyalty.  By your example of being the Peace that you are, will your brother see he is the same and that all “specialness” has become One.  To join with but one brother at that level of Mind is to “bless” him, and to “bless” that one, is to “bless” them all, as all are One.  In this healing of your mind does he see his own.

17.  LOVE, “Your ancient name, belongs to everyone, as theirs to you.” “Call on your brothers name (Love) and God will answer, for on Him you call.”  As we see only The Christ in our brothers, so will we remember God.  This is the PROCESS.  We can do it individually and right where we are, right NOW.  There is nowhere to go, and we don’t have to “get holy” before we begin.  Extend the Love that you are in whatever way this translates to you.  Bake cookies, paint a picture, grow a flower.  Smile.  These are the miracles you offer.  There is no difference in miracles.  One is not “bigger” and another “smaller.”  One not “harder” and another “easier.”  All expressions of Love are maximal.” - and by this little gift of truth but let to be itself, the Son of God allowed to be Himself, and all creation freed to call upon the Name of God as one.

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