MONDAY MAY 30, 2016
Simply Look to the Light
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A COURSE IN MIRACLES
CH 13 "FROM PERCEPTION TO KNOWLEDGE"
VI. THE TESTIMONY OF MIRACLES

53 The Holy Spirit, therefore, must begin His teaching by showing you what you can never learn. His message is not indirect, but He must introduce the simple truth into a thought system which has become so twisted and so complex that you cannot see that it means nothing. He merely looks at its foundation and dismisses it. But you, who cannot undo what you have made [nor escape the heavy burden of its dullness that lies upon your minds], cannot see through it. It deceives you because you chose to deceive yourselves. Those who choose to be deceived will merely attack direct approaches, which would seem but to encroach upon deception and strike at it.

A COURSE IN MIRACLES
WORKBOOK Part I ~ REVIEW IV
INTRODUCTION
SonShip Video Review II
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*IAMBIC PENTAMETER*
WHAT IS IAMBIC PENTAMETER? 
 
   Now we review again, this time aware
   we are preparing for the second part
   of learning how the truth can be applied.
   Today we will begin to concentrate
   on readiness for what will follow next.
   Such is our aim for this review and for
   the lessons following. Thus we review
   the recent lessons and their central thoughts
   in such a way as will facilitate
   the readiness which we would now achieve.|
 
   There is a central theme which unifies
   each step in the review we undertake.
   It can be simply stated in these words:
 
   "My mind holds only what I think with God."
 
   This is a fact. And represents the truth
   of What you are and What your Father is.
   It is this Thought by Which the Father gave
   creation to the Son, establishing
   the Son as co-creator with Himself.
   It is this Thought Which fully guarantees
   salvation to the Son. For in his mind
   no thoughts can dwell but those his Father shares.
   Lack of forgiveness blocks this Thought from his
   awareness. Yet It is forever true.|
 
   Let us begin our preparation with
   some understanding of the many forms
   in which the lack of true forgiveness may
   be carefully concealed. Because they are
   illusions, they are not perceived to be
   but what they are; defenses which protect
   your unforgiving thoughts from being seen
   and recognized. Their purpose is to show
   you something else, and hold correction off
   through self-deception made to take its place.|
 
   And yet your mind holds only what you think
   with God. Your self-deceptions cannot take
   the place of truth. No more than can a child
   who throws a stick into the ocean change
   the coming in and going out of tides,
   the warming of the water by the sun,
   the silver of the moon on it by night.
   So do we start each practice period
   in this review with readying our mind
   to understand the lessons that we read
   and see the meaning which they offer us.|
 
   Begin each day with time devoted to
   the preparation of your mind to learn
   what each idea you will review that day
   can offer you in freedom and in peace.
   Open your mind and clear it of all thoughts
   that would deceive, and let this Thought alone
   engage it fully and remove the rest:
 
   "My mind holds only what I think with God."
 
   Five minutes with this Thought will be enough
   to set the day along the lines which God
   appointed, and to place His Mind in charge
   of all the thoughts you will receive that day.|
   They will not come from you alone, for they
   will all be shared with Him. And so each one
   will bring the message of His Love to you,
   returning messages of yours to Him.
   So will communion with the Lord of Hosts
   be yours, as He Himself has willed it be.
   And as His Own completion joins with Him,
   so will He join with you who are complete
   as you unite with Him and He with you.|
 
   After your preparation, merely read
   each of the two ideas assigned to you
   to be reviewed that day. Then close your eyes
   and say them slowly to yourself. There is
   no hurry now, for you are using time
   for its intended purpose. Let each word
   shine with the meaning God has given it
   as it was given to you through His Voice.
   Let each idea that you review today
   give you the gift which He has laid in it
   for you to have of Him. And we will use
   no format for our practicing but this:|
 
   Each hour of the day, bring to your mind
   the Thought with which the day began, and spend
   a quiet moment with It. Then repeat
   the two ideas you practice for the day
   unhurriedly, with time enough to see
   the gifts which they contain for you, and let
   them be received where they were meant to be.|
   We add no other thoughts, but let them be
   the messages they are. We need no more
   than that to give us happiness and rest
   and endless quiet, perfect certainty,
   and all our Father wills that we receive
   as the inheritance we have of Him.
 
   Each day of practicing, as we review,
   we close as we began, repeating first
   the Thought that made the day a special time
   of blessing and of happiness for us;
   and through our faithfulness restored the world
   from darkness to the light, from grief to joy,
   from pain to peace, from sin to holiness.|
   God offers thanks to you who practice thus
   the keeping of His Word. And as you give
   your mind to the ideas for the day
   again before you sleep, His gratitude
   surrounds you with the peace wherein He willed
   you be forever, and are learning now
   to claim again as your inheritance.       
 
      ~ Original Handscript of ACIM
   
 
 
          
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DAILY LESSON
SonShip Workbook 
 L e s s o n 150 ~ Review IV
Lesson 139 and Lesson 140
Voice and Music by CIMS SonShip Radio
    
*IAMBIC PENTAMETER*
 
My mind holds only what I think with God. 

  [139] "I will accept Atonement for myself."
 
  [140] "Only salvation can be said to cure."
   
                ~ Original Handscript Notes 
 
 
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ACIM Edmonton - Sarah's Reflections 
ACIM Edmonton, CA
LESSON 150
Review IV ~ Lesson 139 and Lesson 140

Sarah's Commentary:  

[139] I will accept Atonement for myself. [140] Only salvation can be said to cure.
 
Here we are, almost half way through the year. Hard to believe! Today's Lesson is the final one in our review. It is a reminder about the importance of dedicating ourselves to accepting our true identity, which is already in our minds and who we already are, in this present moment. It seems we have partitioned off our true identity from our awareness, yet it is the only real thing about us. The self we think we are is an image, a false identity, and a character, in the dream we took on in the tiny tick of time when we aligned with the ego. This self is a bundle of thoughts, beliefs, and values we hold and includes all the concepts we have about ourselves, as well as the roles we have adopted. None of them are true. The only thing true is that we remain as God created us---perfect, whole, holy, in Oneness with Him, and containing all His attributes as His Son.
 
For many years, as I studied and practiced the Lessons and the Text, I had trouble understanding what it meant to accept Atonement for myself. In spite of learning the Course definition of Atonement, I kept having the worldly definition in my mind. Atonement is deeply ingrained in me as a negative concept of attrition for my sins, penance, mea culpa, belief in unworthiness, and having done wrong and needing to atone for my sins, but this is not the Course definition. Instead of being about atoning for sins, it is only about accepting the Correction for our mistakes. When we come to recognize we have never left our Source, there will be nothing left to correct. While we know we have made many mistakes, held grievances, and hurt others, Jesus assures us there is no need for guilt because we have not sinned. He simply invites us to accept the Correction in our minds for our mistakes, and they will be released by His love and His grace. If sin existed, there could be no correction, only punishment. However, Jesus assures us we have not sinned. We have only made a mistake in choosing separation and with it, our separate identity. Furthermore, he says the mistake was corrected by the Holy Spirit the second we made it. Now it is about accepting the Correction anytime we choose. The Holy Spirit negated all consequences of the decision for separation.
 
As a result of our choice for the separation, we forgot who we are and got lost in this dark dream of the ego. The only way back to the awareness of our Self, which is already in the mind, is by accepting who we really are in our perfection, in our Oneness with our Creator, and in our innocence. This is what is meant by accepting the Atonement for ourselves. It is the letting go of our guilt and shame, our judgments on ourselves, our self-concepts, our self-assessments, our individuality, our specialness, and ultimately our mistaken notion that we are bodies. In fact, it is letting go of everything we think we are as egos, bodies, and personalities. Basically, to accept the Atonement is to accept the truth about ourselves as created in the image of God with all His characteristics. Thus, it is a process of reconciliation not possible within the framework of the ego thought system, meaning, the ego will never undo itself. We need help from outside the ego framework. In other words, we need to ask for help of the Holy Spirit in the mind.
 
Jesus has laid out a carefully designed curriculum, letting us know how to come back to ourselves. We do these Lessons in training the mind, recognizing we don't know the way, and rely on One Who does know. Only with our mind training and our willingness, dedication, commitment and openness, can our minds be prepared for healing. What we are invited to do is to watch our mistaken thoughts about ourselves, look at all our judgments, worries, grievances, anger, and specialness as they come to awareness, and be willing to bring them to Correction. When we look at our judgments with the light, love, and non-judgment of Spirit, we are reminded what we are perceiving and believing is not the truth. He is the Correction always available to us when we are willing to take the first step and look at our own mistaken choices. This is what forgiveness is. It brings the miracle. It shifts our perception. It brings us back to our magnitude. All we are asked to do is stay vigilant by not falling into littleness.
 
The ego's "life" depends on our acceptance of ourselves as guilty sinners. The ego's voice berates us, "You can't do that! Who do you think you are? It is arrogant to think you are perfect. Look at all the things you have messed up and all the people you have hurt! You should feel guilty. You deserve punishment." To the ego, it is holy to accept oneself as a guilty sinner. The ego is happy when we accept a sentence of guilt on ourselves. However, Jesus tells us if we listen to this counsel, and buy into the ego's description of us, we are actually being arrogant. If God says we are innocent, eternal beings, who have never sinned, then to accept the ego's contention about ourselves is indeed arrogant. It says God is wrong about us and we are right about ourselves. That is why Jesus challenges us with, "Would you rather be right or happy?"
 
This struggle goes on in our conflicted minds, but the Spirit does not fight the ego because the ego is not real. It is a mistaken thought system in the mind that we are called to release. Spirit simply waits for us to prepare our minds to ultimately accept the truth about ourselves. How we get to the truth is through the daily spiritual practice of meditation, contemplation, focus, deep inquiry, and journaling. We will do whatever it takes to come to acceptance of our innocence and our true nature and not the one we made (our ego), but the Self that has all the attributes of God. It is all about accepting what is true about ourselves and denying the power of anything outside our own mind to help us or hurt us. This is about being willing to look with great honesty at how we block and resist the truth.
 
When our investment in the body and personality is recognized as the false self and not who we are, we will be more willing to look at our mistaken decisions and not take them personally. We only defend the false self when we believe it is who we are. As we identify more and more with the one witnessing the persona and not the persona itself, there is less need for defense. Through the release of the fearful self-judgments, space is opened up for the light of truth to dawn on our minds. With each step in this journey, our trust and acceptance of the process increases and we are able to see how all things work together perfectly for our good.
 
It is the constant and persistent voice of the ego that goes on non-stop in our heads that keeps us distracted from the truth. It keeps us invested in the dream or nightmare and constitutes the monkey-mind of random thoughts that torture us and keep us from peace. Its whole purpose is to keep us from the truth. The ego is threatened by our decision-making minds, knowing we can withdraw our allegiance to it whenever we choose. Thus, it is invested in reminding us of our guilt and our unworthiness, and it offers us justification of our anger. Because we don't want the weight of responsibility for all this, we prefer to see ourselves as victims of the world outside ourselves. Our stories of betrayal by others justify our position and maintain our face of innocence. We believe our stories and hide our shadows, constantly trying to show the world an image of this face, yet all this does is cover over the hate and the rage. This is what needs to be seen if we are to discover the love beneath it all.
 
We remind ourselves today, "My mind holds only what I think with God," (W.RIV.IN.2.2) because all the other thoughts are ego-driven and not real thoughts. They constitute the deceived mind that has forgotten who it is. They are the thoughts that keep us from God. They are the thoughts that keep us in hell. They are the thoughts we choose in order to defend against the love we are. They are the thoughts we must be willing to bring to Correction, thus allowing the Holy Spirit to shine them away. How willing are we to do this? How much are we willing to trust Him? How willing are we to walk through the darkness to the light? It does take great honesty and a lot of courage. We must let go of our defenses and be willing to be very vulnerable. It is a process.
 
How do we learn to accept Atonement for ourselves? We take the time to quiet our self-talk, to turn over our anger for healing, and to bring every unworthy, guilty, and impure thought to the truth. This includes our pain, despair, loneliness, helplessness, fear, hurt, confusion, depression, sadness, grief, judgment and every concept we hold about ourselves, whether we judge it as good or bad. All this, and more, we bring to this miraculous place of the Atonement. We take the time required to connect with the place of peace in ourselves, where we can experience a holy instant, a glimpse of Heaven, and let the holiness in us be experienced.
 
We accept the healing in our minds every time we reach out to a brother with joy, peace, and love. When we offer patience and love instead of condemnation, and when we offer forgiveness instead of correction of a brother, then we will understand what accepting the Atonement for ourselves is about. Then we will be motivated to visit this place, more and more often, until we can truly know this world is not our home and the ego is not who we really are. Then we will know true healing of the mind, which is the only cure for every kind of pain we experience. This is our willingness to take ourselves and our brothers out of our self-imposed prison of the ego thought system.
 
None of our chosen remedies for the guilt that we project onto the body will work. "Only salvation can be said to cure." (W.140) We are reminded in this Lesson that the treatments for sickness, offered by the world, can never cure because they don't treat the problem. They only address the symptoms. The problem is the guilt in our minds, which we project onto the body and now we see it in form. We come to recognize there is indeed a real cure for the guilt. The cure is our acceptance of Atonement that addresses the only problem we have, which is the guilt in the mind that came with the separation.
 
If God is holiness and is everywhere, and sin and guilt are nothing and nowhere, then guilt and sin are baseless. They are completely invalid emotions that have no reality. When we believe in our guilt and sin, it seems to have reality. Our responsibility, however, is to withdraw belief and recognize sickness as just another form of guilt. A sick body offers us an opportunity to see the guilt in our minds and be willing to choose peace and healing. We are not always able to do that in the face of sickness. Jesus assures us that we need not feel guilty about taking some form of magic to relieve the symptoms so that we can turn within to the real answer when our fear is diminished. We can never experience true healing by addressing effects. Real healing must address the cause, which is the guilt in our minds.
 
Now we come to our final practice in this review and affirm the truth about ourselves once again. It is helpful to notice your resistance to waking up from this dream by taking note of how often you remember to do the Lesson. We all have resistance to giving over our control, our independence, and our seemingly separate selves. We are very invested in our concepts and our opinions. We are invested in being right about ourselves. What it all does is keep us from being truly happy.
 
We have filled our minds with ideas, beliefs and values we hold as true, and now we must recognize that none of these ideas have brought true peace. With this recognition comes the motivation to step back into the stillness and defenselessness of our true Self. When we are defensive, we have identified with an illusion of ourselves. It is not who we are.
 
Love and blessings, Sarah
VI. The Testimony of Miracles     
 
47 Yes, you are blessed indeed. Yet in this world, you do not know it. But you have the means for learning it and seeing it quite clearly. The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily and as well, as does the ego, except that His conclusions are not insane. They take a direction exactly opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. We have followed much of the ego's logic and have seen its logical conclusions. And having seen them, we have realized that they cannot be seen but in illusions, for there alone their seeming clearness seems to be clearly seen. Let us now turn away from them and follow the simple logic by which the Holy Spirit teaches you the simple conclusions that speak for truth and only truth.
 
48 If you are blessed and do not know it, you need to learn it must be so. The knowledge is not taught, but its conditions must be acquired, for it is they that have been thrown away. You can learn to bless and cannot give what you have not. If, then, you offer blessing, it must have come first to yourself. And you must also have accepted it as yours, for how else could you give it away?
 
49 That is why your miracles offer you the testimony that you are blessed. If what you offer is complete forgiveness, you must have let guilt go, accepting the Atonement for yourself and learning you are guiltless. How could you learn what has been done for you, but which you do not know, unless you do what you would have to do if it had been done unto you? Indirect proof of truth is needed in a world made of denial and without direction. You will perceive the need for this if you will realize that to deny is the decision not to know. The logic of the world must therefore lead to nothing, for its goal is nothing.
 
50 If you decide to have and give and be nothing except a dream, you must direct your thoughts unto oblivion. And if you have and give and are everything, and all this has been denied, your thought system is closed off and wholly separated from the truth. This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the actual extent of its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your dream is sacred to you. That is why God placed the Holy Spirit in you, where you placed the dream.
 
51 Seeing is always outward. Were your thoughts wholly of you, the thought system which you made would be forever dark. The thoughts which the mind of God's Son projects have all the power that he gives to them. The thoughts he shares with God are beyond his belief, but those he made are his beliefs. And it is these, and not the truth, that he has chosen to defend and love. They will not be taken from him. But they can be given up by him, for the Source of their undoing is in him. There is nothing in the world to teach him that the logic of the world is totally insane and leads to nothing. Yet in him who made this insane logic, there is One Who knows it leads to nothing, for He knows everything.
 
52 Any direction which will lead you where the Holy Spirit leads you not goes nowhere. Anything you deny which He knows to be true, you have denied yourself, and He must therefore teach you not to deny it. Undoing is indirect, as doing is. You were created only to create, neither to see nor do. These are but indirect expressions of the will to live, which has been blocked by the capricious and unholy whim of death and murder that your Father shared not with you. You have set yourselves the task of sharing what cannot be shared. And while you think it possible to learn to do this, you will not believe all that is possible to learn to do.
 
53 The Holy Spirit, therefore, must begin His teaching by showing you what you can never learn. His message is not indirect, but He must introduce the simple truth into a thought system which has become so twisted and so complex that you cannot see that it means nothing. He merely looks at its foundation and dismisses it. But you, who cannot undo what you have made [nor escape the heavy burden of its dullness that lies upon your minds], cannot see through it. It deceives you because you chose to deceive yourselves. Those who choose to be deceived will merely attack direct approaches, which would seem but to encroach upon deception and strike at it.

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