L e s s o n  318

In me salvation's means and end are one. 
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IAMBIC PENTAMETER 
format from URTEXT by Lee Flynn

   Christ's Second Coming gives the Son of God

   the gift to hear the Voice for God proclaim

   that what is false is false, and what is true

   has never changed. And this the judgment is

   in which perception ends. At first you see

   a world which has accepted this as true,

   projected from a now corrected mind.

   And with this holy sight, perception gives

   a silent blessing and then disappears,

   its goal accomplished and its mission done.

   The final judgment on the world contains

   no condemnation. For it sees the world

   as totally forgiven, without sin,

   and wholly purposeless. Without a cause,

   and now without a function in Christ's sight,

   it merely slips away to nothingness.

   There it was born, and there it ends as well.

   And all the figures in the dream in which

   the world began go with it. Bodies now

   are useless, and will therefore fade away,

   because the Son of God is limitless.

   You who believed that Gods last judgment would

   condemn the world to hell along with you,

   accept this holy truth: God's judgment is

   the gift of the Correction He bestowed

   on all your errors, freeing you from them,

   and all effects they ever seemed to have.

   To fear HIs saving grace is but to fear

   complete release from suffering, return

   to peace, security and happiness,

   and union with your own Identity.

   God's final judgment is as merciful

   as every step in His appointed plan

   to save His Son, and call Him to return

   to the eternal peace He shares with him.

   Be not afraid of Love. For It alone

   can heal all sorrow, wipe away all tears,

   and gently waken from his dreams of pain

   the Son whom God acknowledges as His.

   Be not afraid of this. Salvation asks

   you give it welcome. And the world awaits

   your glad acceptance, which will set it free.|

   This is God's final judgment: "You are still

   My holy Son, forever innocent,

   forever loving and forever loved,

   as limitless as Your Creator, and

   completely changeless and forever pure.

   Therefore awaken and return to Me.

   I am Your Father, and you are My Son. 

   ~ Original Handscript of ACIM

Whenever in the Course, means and end are discussed I find it can seem very convoluted and difficult to understand. This lesson therefore seems not to be quite as direct and straight forward to understand as some of the others nor is it easy to think about how to best practice it today. But when it is boiled down to the simple core of it, it is basically saying that as God's Son, I have only one purpose here which is to find the sinlessness (innocence) that God has placed in me. (1.4)  In other words, it is to accept Atonement for myself. As God's Son, I am the goal that the world is searching for. We all have the same goal which is to awaken to the truth of who we are as innocent, eternal, holy beings.

We saw in lesson 302 where Jesus said that God is the end we seek and He is the means by which we come to Him. Now Jesus says that we are the end we seek as well as the means. What this means is that the end we seek is to know ourselves as God's Son and the means is through forgiveness. This makes it much clearer.  Then he says:  "In me, God's holy Son, are reconciled all part of Heaven's plan to save the world." (1.1) That can sound very obscure. But if you go back to Christianity, it was Jesus, as God's Son who reconciled the sin of man through the love of God. Now reconciliation comes through all of us as God's Son. Jesus says he is not the only one, but we are God's Son the same as he. So all of us now are the means of reconciling God's Son to Himself. We all play our part in undoing the belief in sin and realizing our own innocence and that of everyone else until we realize we are all one.

 "What could conflict when all the parts have but one purpose and one aim?"(1.2) In other words, why would we have conflict with any brother when we are all share the same purpose? Every seeming fragment of this one Christ Self has the same purpose. Every aspect is part of the one whole. We all share one goal. Knowing that, can help us to address how we see ourselves as better and special and as a result judge and critique other  aspects of the Sonship (our brothers). As we watch our mind we can now bring these condemning thoughts to the Holy Spirit. All of our comparisons are ways to keep us distinct, unique and separate from the whole. We are still very much afraid of love as Jesus tells us in the Last Judgment when he says "Be not afraid of love. For it alone can heal all sorrow, wipe away all tears and gently waken from his dream of pain the Son whom God acknowledges as His. Be not afraid of this. Salvation asks you give it welcome. And the world awaits your glad acceptance, which will set it free." 10.4.2-6

So this day is about watching your mind in order to see instances where you want to see yourself separate and different, seeing yourself as more or less spiritual than others, how you choose to take sides in a situation or hold opinions, and what you think is more or less important in your day. It is to recognize that forgiveness and joining with your brother is the end you seek so that you can know the God Self that you and everyone is.

The challenge presented to us in this lesson is to use the means available to us to bring our darkness to the light so that we can be the  light of the world. In Christianity only Jesus has that role. He is the way and the truth and the life.  But the Course teaches that we are to use his example to do the healing work to be the way and the truth and the life. "Who is the light of the world except God's Son?" (lesson 61) And the truth about ourselves is that we are God's Son. "I am the goal the world is searching for". (1.6)  "I am the means by which God's Son is saved". (1.4)  Therefore for each of us is the opportunity provided to use  everything that shows up in our lives in order to accept Atonement (healing) for ourselves. Atonement is thus the undoing of a split that never occurred, "the way back to what was never lost" (T-12.VIII.8:8).

Who I think I am as Sarah, a body, living in the world is just a dream. It is not the truth.  It is my mistaken identity that I have come to believe is myself.   In reality we are one Self united with our Creator. When I awaken to that reality, then I will know the truth about my Self. Thus the end is to realize I am God's Son and the means is to see God's Son in everyone including myself and realize that we all share the same goal, the same interests and the same purpose because we are One Self.  

We all seem to be searching for who we are. But the search is unnecessary because we already are what we are searching for. We uncover this truth by giving up our blocks which are our unforgiving dark thoughts. In doing so the truth about ourselves is revealed.  We think of ourselves as imperfect, guilty, fearful and that there is something about us that   needs fixing. But that, in itself, is the problem because there is nothing to fix. Our belief that we need to fix ourselves only contributes to the problem That is why the Course says we need do nothing. Trying to do something to fix ourselves perpetuates a belief that there is something wrong with us. We are seeking for something that is already in us. There is nothing to change about ourselves. We only need to accept the truth of who we are.

What this requires of us, is that we stop seeing ourselves as the innocent victims of forces beyond our control. We are not the innocent victims of our circumstances however that is the basis for the stories we tell about our lives.  If I am a victim then I must suffer and if I suffer it must be someone out there who is responsible for my pain. Someone must have inflicted it on me. "Behold me brother by your hand I die" is the war cry of the ego. You are the cause of my pain. My script is not my own and I am not responsible for my life, according to the thinking of the victim stance. "I didn't do it, it's not my fault" is the way we buy our innocence in this world. 

But it is a false innocence based on a projected thought system of a mind that is a battleground. No it is not our dysfunctional parents, unkind peers, cruel unthoughtful teachers, merciless managers, unappreciative spouses that are the reason for our suffering. On the contrary, they are all necessary and beneficial to our learning curriculum here. "And to your brother let its message be, 'Behold me, brother, at your hand I live'". (T.27.I.10.7) They offer us our salvation playing a role that we have given them to help us to awaken. They provide us with ample opportunities to learn the gift that comes to us through forgiveness.

When we no longer see ourselves as victims but as responsible for our own script, we recognize the power that is in us.  Are you ready for this? What is there to fear? Why do we resist? Now our only job is to have the courage to find the barriers that we have created between ourselves and Love. We say we want to undo the pain but the ego keeps us seeking and seeking for ways to do this. Will this book, this teacher, this guru be the answer? The answer is within, Our remedy has been offered us. All we have to do is look at our own blocks without judgment and to stop defending and resisting them. Allow them to be exposed. Allow our conclusions about everything in this world to be undone and recognize that we don't know.

In Chapter 14.V "The Circle of Atonement" we are reminded that we are all  "Teachers of innocence, each in his own way, have joined together, taking their part in the unified curriculum of the Atonement. There is no unity of learning goals apart from this. There is no conflict in this curriculum, which has one aim, however it is taught. Each effort made on its behalf is offered for the single purpose of release from guilt." If you are currently feeling pain, if you are going through some kind of trial, if you are not at peace, if you are distressed in any way, this tells you that if you truly release anyone from guilt, if you agree to see the sinlessness in them, if you join with them, if you forgive them, then your pain will be completely dissolved. "The power of God Himself supports this teaching and guarantees its limitless results".

If we can know this kind of result, why do we insist on seeing guilt in anyone? Why would we justify our anger? Because the ego insists on it and tells us that the pain of holding guilt can be released by projecting it on others, but it is not the truth. It is actually the way we keep the guilt. The ego does not love us. The ego wants us dead. And as long as we play along with the ego's program, we keep ourselves in hell. Today's lesson encourages us to give up this program. We do so by seeing sinlessness in our brothers and reflecting the light of God in this world through forgiveness.   

We are assured of this but we do not yet totally believe it? We still feel like we need to hold others responsible for our pain. We still see ourselves as innocent victims of uncalled for behavior. Yet the Course says that "from everyone whom you accord release from guilt you will inevitably learn your innocence". (T. 14. 2) So the people that attack us truly are our teachers. Because if we can release them, we have learned to release ourselves. They have agreed to play this difficult role in our lives for that purpose. So we can crucify them or learn to forgive and thus be released from the prison that we hold our brothers and ourselves.   It is our choice!

I am more determined than ever to make this choice. The miracle restores to our minds the power to make this choice. I find that when irritation arises in me because of something that someone says or does, I am more and more consciously choosing to bring my judgments to the light and choosing peace instead. I find that my determination is all that has changed. I am noticing more and more the part of my mind that works against my best interests and wants to be right and chooses the conflict instead of peace. That is all it takes. Stop, look and be willing.

In 2.1 He says "for thus does what is thereby reconciled in me becomes as surely reconciled to You" What does this mean? In Chapter 10, The End of Sickness, he talks about how we try to reconcile the irreconcilable. In other words we try to bring together illusion and truth. We think we can bring some truth into our illusion. We want the things of this world while bringing God into our lives. But it will never work. We can't have freedom while we hold onto that which keeps us in bondage. We can only know truth by releasing our illusions. And that is how we are reconciled. That is how we know Oneness. That is the Atonement which simply means reconciliation with God. By taking our part, in the Atonement, meaning that we take our role in Heaven's plan to save the world, we benefit by finally reconciling with God, which is the end. So the means are to do our part and the end is to know our oneness with God which is to know that we are as God created us.  But it is easy to see why we resist this teaching and how much the ego is threatened by it.

When we choose peace we become a teacher of peace, because we learn that peace is what we are. As such we are the end, and we are the way that salvation happens. We are the light of the world (the end) and we are the way to get there. Reminding ourselves today that we are eternal Love, we are God's Son, created perfect and that we are here to bring light to the world as our only function is a giant stride in our progress according to lesson 61. This idea is revisited here and is very important to our awakening. We are what we are looking for. Doing our part serves us and benefits us. So "Let me today, my Father, take the role You offer me in Your request that I accept Atonement for myself."(2.1)

 Love and blessings, Sarah

 Sarah's Home Page

Quotes in this article are from Foundation for Inner Peace edition; To locate the same quotes in the 'Original Edition', use this link:  http://www.jcim.net/acim_us/Acim.php  
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^{A Course in Miracles
 TEXT
 Chapter Thirty
The New Beginning}

V. The Truth Behind Illusions