Lesson 229
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Relationship is the Holy Spirit's Temple
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A COURSE IN MIRACLES
CH 20 THE PROMISE OF THE RESURRECTION
VII. THE TEMPLE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 
    
49 The Holy Spirit's temple is not a body, but a relationship. The body is an isolated speck of darkness; a hidden secret room, a tiny spot of senseless mystery, a meaningless enclosure carefully protected, yet hiding nothing. Here the unholy relationship escapes reality and seeks for crumbs to keep itself alive. Here it would drag its brothers, holding them here in its idolatry. Here it is "safe," for here love cannot enter. The Holy Spirit does not build His temples where love can never be. Would He Who sees the face of Christ choose as His home the only place in all the universe where it can not be seen?

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A COURSE IN MIRACLES
WORKBOOK for STUDENTS
What is Forgiveness
WHAT IS FORGIVENESS? 

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*IAMBIC PENTAMETER*
 
   Forgiveness recognizes what you thought
   your brother did to you has not occurred.
   It does not pardon sins, and make them real.
   It sees there was no sin. And in this view
   are all your sins forgiven. What is sin
   except a false idea of God's Son?
   Forgiveness merely sees its falsity,
   and therefore lets it go. What then is free
   to take its place is now the Will of God.
 
   An unforgiving thought is one which makes
   a judgment that it will not raise to doubt,
   although it is untrue. The mind is closed,
   and will not be released. The thought protects
   projection, tightening its chains, so that
   distortions are more veiled and more obscure;
   less easily accessible to doubt,
   and further kept from reason. What can come
   between a fixed projection and the aim
   that it has chosen as its needed goal?
 
   An unforgiving thought does many things.
   In frantic action it pursues its goal,
   twisting and overturning what it sees
   as interfering with its chosen path.
   Distortion is its purpose, and the means
   by which it would accomplish it as well.
   It sets about its furious attempts
   to smash reality without concern
   for anything that would appear to pose
   a contradiction to its point of view.
 
   Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still
   and quietly does nothing. It offends
   no aspect of reality, nor seeks
   to twist it to appearance that it likes.
   It merely looks and waits and judges not.
   He who would not forgive must judge, for he
   must justify his failure to forgive.
   But he who would forgive himself must learn
   to welcome truth exactly as it is.
 
   Do nothing, then, and let forgiveness show
   you what to do through Him Who is your Guide,
   your Saviour and Defender, strong in hope
   and certain of your ultimate success.
   He has forgiven you already, for
   such is His function, given Him by God.
   Now must you share His function, and forgive
   whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees,
   and whom He honors as the Son of God. "
 
  ~ Original Hand Script September 21, 1970

  
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DAILY LESSON
SonShip Workbook
 L e s s o n 229
Love, Which created me,
is what I am.  


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   I seek my own identity, and find    
   it in these words: "Love, Which created me,
   is what I am." Now need I seek no more.
   Love has prevailed. So still it waited for
   my coming home, that I will turn away
   no longer from the holy face of Christ.
   And what I look upon attests the truth
   of the identity I sought to lose,
   but which my Father has kept safe for me.

    Father, my thanks to You for what I am; 
    for keeping my identity untouched
    and sinless in the midst of all the thoughts
    of sin my foolish mind made up. And thanks
    to You for saving me from them. Amen

    ~ Original Handscript of ACIM  
 
  
          
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ACIM Edmonton - Sarah's Reflections 
ACIM Edmonton, CA
LESSON 229

Love, Which created me, is what I am.

Sarah's Commentary:   

This Lesson is about the importance of accepting our reality, which is not a body or personality that we think of as ourselves. "I am not a body. I am free for I am still as Love created me." (W.220) When the mind is healed, we can experience our Oneness with the Father and with all of our brothers and sisters. There is no separation.
 
What does forgiveness have to do with all of this? It is about releasing all of our judgments about ourselves, all of our self-concepts, beliefs, and grievances, which are made-up by ". . . my foolish mind." (W.229.2.1) Nothing we think about ourselves and the world is true, including the body, which is not our reality and not who we are. The body is a projection of the mind. It is the projection of our unconscious guilt and our judgments that keep us from awareness of the truth. It is not a part of the mind, but it is projected by the mind onto the screen of this world.
 
We need to bring all judgments, opinions, ideas, beliefs, and concepts to truth, bringing the illusory thoughts we hold in the mind, to the light. Adding spirituality to the illusion is not helpful. All it does is bring some spiritual concepts to what we currently hold in the mind. It is another defense against the truth, adding another block to the awareness of love's presence. Thus, spiritualizing the illusion is not helpful. Spiritualizing the illusion is when we try to bring God into our lives in the mistaken belief we can make our lives better and happier here.
 
Yet the goal of the Course is to awaken from this dream, not make the prison house prettier so we can have a better dream. When the blocks to love are released, space is made for the peace and joy already in our minds to come through. This means we need to look at our thoughts with courage, honesty, and clarity and bring them to the feet of Holiness where they will be dissolved. Our job is to be very vigilant in watching our thoughts and being willing to put them on the inner altar. We must look at our grievances with total honesty and take responsibility for them, recognizing they are just foolish thoughts. Then, we wait patiently in trust and confidence for the Holy Spirit to do the rest. The Holy Spirit responds immediately at our request though it seems there is a delay, but what we are waiting for is our own readiness to receive His answer and be released. Even when we say we are ready, if we are completely honest, we can connect with some resistance to letting our perspectives go.
 
For example, I have, in the past, been insecure in my relationships, which created feelings of possessiveness and jealousy. I thought the way to address my problem was to find ways to control my partner in the mistaken belief that if he did what I wanted him to do or stopped doing what was making me jealous, I could be happy. It was ready to ask for real healing only when I was willing to look at my mind as the cause of my feelings of insecurity, release the fears, and take responsibility for what I was feeling as coming from my own mind. The answer is always to look at our projections, based on what is going on in our own minds, rather than trying to change things in form. The jealousy persisted even after I thought I had brought it forth to be forgiven. Clearly, it was an indication there were lingering fears still in the mind that I was not yet ready to release. Then one day I noticed that the same intensity of feelings about abandonment and unworthiness were considerably lessened. What had happened? It seemed I had given them over to the Holy Spirit, but I was unaware I was taking my fears back from Him, from time to time. Each time I had to ask for help until one day I noticed the feeling of jealousy could not be found. The beauty of it was, it was not my doing. The ego will never undo itself. Our part is always to bring awareness to our issues, take responsibility for them, inquire into the root cause, and place the issue on the inner altar, and the Holy Spirit does the rest. It is what makes forgiveness easy, as our part is not difficult when we do not resist.
 
The reason it seems to take time is that even though we say we are willing to let certain fears and issues go we still stubbornly hold onto them; or we turn them over only to take them back. For example, we might give over a fear thought, but later notice our minds ruminating on that same thought again. This is the temptation of the ego to keep the fear thought and thereby justify its own existence. When we ruminate on thoughts that we think we have released, we are still invested in them. We like our own thoughts, which define us as special and separate from others. Who would I be without these thoughts? Our mind-watching must be vigilant if we are to catch the ego at its game. When our determination for healing is strong, all situations and events in our lives contribute perfectly. When this is the case, nothing in our day is wrong. Everything shows up perfectly. We do not see anything as a problem only as an opportunity to heal another layer of the mind.
 
This Course does not simply tell us the world is a dream and an illusion, but it takes us to the root of that belief, and slowly, as we are ready, we learn to undo the hallucination until we awaken to the truth in our right minds. Affirmations assist us in this process because they affirm the truth, but they will never be enough. We can never drown out the incessant voice of the ego with the truth. We must do the work of undoing the ego with willingness and determination. We must question everything we currently hold as true.
 
Forgiveness is at the core of our work of healing our minds. Releasing our judgments helps us to realize there is nothing we need to do in order to know the truth about ourselves. There is nothing to seek. We are it. We are Love. That is the truth about us, obscured by illusions. Jesus asks, "Do you really think it strange that a world in which everything is backwards and upside down arose from this projection of error?" (T.18.I.6.4) (ACIM OE T.18.II.6) It all came from the projection of the thoughts in the mind. I have taught myself this madness and I suffer for it, but I am urged not to be afraid of what I have made, for it is ". . . not sin but madness." (T.18.I.6.7) (ACIM OE T.18.II.6) "Inward is sanity; insanity is outside you." (T.18.I.7.4) (ACIM OE T.18.II.7)
 
"Love is not learned. Its meaning lies within itself. And learning ends when you have recognized all it is not." (T.18.IX.12.1-3) (ACIM OE T.18.XI.96)

We will remember ourselves as the love we are and know the truth about ourselves when everything we made up that is upside down and backwards is given over for healing or, in other words, is brought to the light. We do not need to fix ourselves. We just need to release all of the beliefs and concepts that are not true. Many of these beliefs are reinforced by the world. An example of this is from a manuscript written by Karen Bentley, a Course teacher who wrote that Rush Limbaugh, a talk show host, apparently spoke of four popular beliefs about addiction, which are:

1. We need help to solve our problems with addictions.

2. We are powerless victims of the disease.

3. We can never really heal and are stuck in the limbo of recovery forever.

4. To stop yourself from addictions is a monumentally difficult task.

Jesus helps us to see these ideas are taught to us by an ego mind that is false, limiting, disempowering, and self-attacking. We are not weak, helpless, sick or victimized by anything. Yet it is easy to embrace such statements and believe in them when everyone around us holds them near and dear. Because millions or even billions hold this as true does not make it so. As we accept these kinds of popularized thoughts into our minds, we are limiting ourselves and blocking our happiness. It is apparent we cannot look to the world to change our perceptions. We need to look to our own minds and bring these and other false thoughts to the truth. Any addiction can be healed. Willpower is not what is required. In fact, willpower has very little power on its own because it is not of God. Only willingness to bring our unhealed thoughts to the light of truth has true power to heal. These are thoughts that have been kept locked away in the conditioned mind.
 
Jesus asks us to examine, "Have you not wondered what the world is really like; how it would look through happy eyes? The world you see is but a judgment on yourself. It is not there at all. Yet judgment lays a sentence on it, justifies it and makes it real. Such is the world you see; a judgment on yourself, and made by you. This sickly picture of yourself is carefully preserved by the ego, whose image it is and which it loves, and placed outside you in the world. And to this world must you adjust as long as you believe the picture is outside, and has you at its mercy. This world is merciless, and were it outside of you, you should indeed be fearful. Yet it was you who made it merciless, and now if mercilessness seems to look back at you, it can be corrected." (T.20.III.5.1-9) (ACIM OE T.20.IV.20)
 
This is saying it is within our control to change what we perceive because the world is just a projection of the thought system of sin, guilt, and fear held by our minds. In other words, the world reflects what we are thinking. I do not have control over the world I made, but I do have control over my mind. By trying to change things in the world or by trying to change or control others in order to make me happy, I will always be fighting a losing battle, but as I heal my mind, I will look on the world through the eyes of love. It does not necessarily mean the behavior of others will change, though it may, but if not, my perception of their behavior certainly will.
 
I have been a master of manipulation and control in my relationships. It was all based on fear and a deep sense of unworthiness. I did not feel the love within and therefore tried to extract it from others. It was all based on my neediness and sense of lack. It was not easy to take back my projections and take responsibility for them, but as I did so, more and more, I recognized the love in me was always there. When my husband left me many years ago, I learned that love was not about trying to keep the form. Yes, it was difficult, and feelings of rejection, abandonment, and unworthiness came up, but I felt assurance from Jesus that I was not left comfortless. I learned that when the goal for the relationship is changed from specialness to holiness, initially there is significant conflict, so I accepted this was part of the process of healing. As such, I held in my mind the firm belief I would come through it with his help. This is the value of the Course because Jesus lays out the path very clearly for us and helps us to see what we can expect as we go through this process. When everything seems to be falling apart, we do not need to run from the Course, but instead, we recognize we are on the way through the darkness to the light. The process is indeed difficult at times, but the end result is more and more peace and joy in our lives.
 
"Love wishes to be known, completely understood and shared. It has no secrets; nothing that it would keep apart and hide. It walks in sunlight, open-eyed and calm, in smiling welcome and in sincerity so simple and so obvious it cannot be misunderstood." (T.20.VI.2.5-7) (ACIM OE T.20.VII.46)
 
If you are distressed today, know there is a program running in your mind of thoughts, beliefs, and self-concepts, to be uncovered for your healing. The Holy Spirit will not bring these thoughts to the light because we are the ones that made them and now it is our job to bring them to the truth. Only I am responsible for my lack of peace. If I do not have peace, it is because I have thrown it away, giving someone or something the power to take it from me. I can withdraw that power when I realize that everything happening is what I have called into my day. When I take responsibility for my lack of peace and willingly turn over my beliefs, what I perceived as problems become opportunities for healing. As we become more and more confident in the power of this process, we welcome challenges as they assist us to look more deeply into the ego thought system. "The darkest of your hidden cornerstones holds your belief in guilt from your awareness." (T.13.II.3.1) (ACIM OE T.13.II.3) Increasingly, we move toward these dark cornerstones with more and more confidence. We come to know and trust the power of the Holy Spirit working in our lives because we have tested it out and found it to be true. When the mind and emotions shift, there is also a shift in the seeming world, and thus we experience more and more peace and joy.
 
The caution is that as chronic problems in our lives are brought up for healing there may be a sense that things are getting worse for us, but this is only because these problems have layers. As we uncover each layer, we go deeper into the mind, a place the ego has kept out of our awareness. This is where all of our unhappiness, conflict, and fear originate. The deeper we go into the mind, the more we uncover and, sometimes, the worse we feel; but this need not be. From outside of the dream, we can see the unreality of it all and approach this mind-watching activity with positive anticipation, knowing the outcome is ultimately more peace and joy.
 
The ego says, "Don't go there." Yet when it seems dangerous to the ego mind, it is celebrated by Spirit. Under the darkness is the love. What the ego is really afraid of is love. The ego is happy to see us stay in our suffering and continue to believe our own thoughts. The real fear held by the ego is when we go through the dark clouds, we will discover the truth about ourselves that the clouds are not real. The sun has always been shining on us, simply obscured by the clouds which are our own thoughts. We are pure Love. Our fear is of losing control and submitting to the love, which we keep out of our awareness in order to preserve our beliefs and self-concepts about who we think we are.
 
We are eternally powerful beings who can never die. "Love, which created me, is what I am." (W.229) I dedicate these words today to the memory of my ex-husband Dr. Ken Ward, who left his body on this day, but, like all of us, was created in love and continues in the truth because we cannot die. May this awareness grow in each of us. It is what time is for.

Love and Blessings, Sarah 
ACIM Original Edition
VII. The Temple of the Holy Spirit     
 
45 The meaning of the Son of God lies solely in his relationship with his Creator. If it were elsewhere, it would rest upon contingency, but there is nothing else. And this is wholly loving and forever. Yet has the Son of God invented an unholy relationship between him and his Father. His real relationship is one of perfect union and unbroken continuity. The one he made is partial, self-centered, broken into fragments, and full of fear. The one created by his Father is wholly self-encompassing and self-extending. The one he made is wholly self-destructive and self-limiting.
 
46 Nothing can show the contrast better than the experience of both a holy and an unholy relationship. The first is based on love and rests on it, serene and undisturbed. The body does not intrude upon it. Any relationship in which the body enters is based not on love, but on idolatry. Love wishes to be known, completely understood, and shared. It has no secrets; nothing that it would keep apart and hide. It walks in sunlight, open-eyed and calm, in smiling welcome and in sincerity so simple and so obvious it cannot be misunderstood. But idols do not share.
 
47 Idols accept, but never make return. They can be loved, but cannot love. They do not understand what they are offered, and any relationship in which they enter has lost its meaning. They live in secrecy, hating the sunlight and happy in the body's darkness where they can hide and keep their secrets hidden along with them. And they have no relationships, for no one else is welcome there. They smile on no one, and those who smile on them they do not see.
 
48 Love has no darkened temples where mysteries are kept obscure and hidden from the sun. It does not seek for power, but for relationships. The body is the ego's chosen weapon for seeking power through relationships. And its relationships must be unholy, for what they are, it does not even see. It wants them solely for the offerings on which its idols thrive. The rest it merely throws away, for all that it could offer is seen as valueless. Homeless, the ego seeks as many bodies as it can collect to place its idols in and so establish them as temples to itself.
 
49 The Holy Spirit's temple is not a body, but a relationship. The body is an isolated speck of darkness; a hidden secret room, a tiny spot of senseless mystery, a meaningless enclosure carefully protected, yet hiding nothing. Here the unholy relationship escapes reality and seeks for crumbs to keep itself alive. Here it would drag its brothers, holding them here in its idolatry. Here it is "safe," for here love cannot enter. The Holy Spirit does not build His temples where love can never be. Would He Who sees the face of Christ choose as His home the only place in all the universe where it can not be seen?
 
50 You cannot make the body the Holy Spirit's temple, and it will never be the seat of love. It is the home of the idolater and of love's condemnation. For here is love made fearful and hope abandoned. Even the idols that are worshiped here are shrouded in mystery and kept apart from those who worship them. This is the temple dedicated to no relationships and no return. Here is the "mystery" of separation perceived in awe and held in reverence. What God would have not be is here kept "safe" from Him. But what you do not realize is what you fear within your brother and would not see in him is what makes God seem fearful to you and kept unknown.
 
51 Idolaters will always be afraid of love, for nothing so severely threatens them as love's approach. Let love draw near them and overlook the body, as it will surely do, and they retreat in fear, feeling the seeming firm foundation of their temple begin to shake and loosen. Brothers, you tremble with them. Yet what you fear is but the herald of escape. This place of darkness is not your home. Your temple is not threatened. You are idolaters no longer. The Holy Spirit's purpose lies safe in your relationship and not your bodies. You have escaped the body. Where you are the body cannot enter, for the Holy Spirit has set His temple there.
 
52 There is no order in relationships. They either are or not. An unholy relationship is no relationship. It is a state of isolation which seems to be what it is not. No more than that. The instant that the mad idea of making your relationship with God unholy seemed to be possible, all your relationships were made meaningless. In that unholy instant, time was born and bodies made to house the mad idea and give it the illusion of reality. And so it seemed to have a home that held together for a little while in time and vanished. For what could house this mad idea against reality but for an instant?
 
53 Idols must disappear and leave no trace behind their going. The unholy instant of their seeming power is frail as is a snowflake, but without its loveliness. Is this the substitute you want for the eternal blessing of the holy instant and its unlimited beneficence? Is the malevolence of the unholy relationship, so seeming powerful and so bitterly misunderstood and so invested in a false attraction, your preference to the holy instant which offers you peace and understanding? Then lay aside the body and quietly transcend it, rising to welcome what you really want. And from His holy temple, look you not back on what you have awakened from. For no illusions can attract the minds that have transcended them and left them far behind.
 
54 The holy relationship reflects the true relationship the Son of God has with his Father in reality. The Holy Spirit rests within it in the certainty it will endure forever. Its firm foundation is eternally upheld by truth, and love shines on it with the gentle smile and tender blessing it offers to its own. Here the unholy instant is exchanged in gladness for the holy one of safe return. Here is the way to true relationships held gently open, through which you walk together, leaving the body thankfully behind and resting in the Everlasting Arms. Love's arms are open to receive you and give you peace forever.
 
55 The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh and then projected outward. This produces what seems to be a wall of flesh around the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant seems to be life; an instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by to offer his devotion to death's idols, and then pass on. And here he is more dead than living. Yet it is also here he makes his choice again between idolatry and love.
 
56 Here it is given him to choose to spend this instant paying tribute to the body or let himself be given freedom from it. Here he can accept the holy instant, offered him to replace the unholy one he chose before. And here can he learn relationships are his salvation and not his doom. You who are learning this may still be fearful, but you are not immobilized. The holy instant is of greater value now to you than its unholy seeming counterpart, and you have learned you really want but one. This is no time for sadness. Perhaps confusion, but hardly discouragement.
 
57 You have a real relationship, and it has meaning. It is as like your real relationship with God as equal things are like unto each other. Idolatry is past and meaningless. Perhaps you fear each other a little yet; perhaps a shadow of the fear of God remains with you. Yet what is that to those who have been given one true relationship beyond the body? Can they be long held back from looking on the face of Christ? And can they long withhold the memory of their relationship with their Father from themselves and keep remembrance of His love apart from their awareness?
         

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