A Course In Miracles Talk 3 - Introduction To Practices
This is my third talk on A Course in Miracles and introduces its practical teachings. To find peace we need to drop all judgements of ourselves and others and turn to the Holy Spirit for help instead of our ego. Forgiveness teaches that the world is a mirror to what is unforgiven in our minds and by seeing and accepting that we can release our guilt with the help of the Holy Spirit All quotes are from the Third Edition of A Course in Miracles, copyright © 2007 by the Foundation for Inner Peace, USA, www.acim.org, used with permission.
Transcript
This is my third talk on A Course in Miracles and as a summary of the practical teachings of the Course.
Forgiveness is the other way which seeks to gently wake us up from our nightmare of separation and murder and return us to the awareness of our true home in heaven.
This dream seems so real that without help we would never awaken.
When the separation from God appeared to happen,
It never did in reality,
We took with us into the dream a memory of God,
To borrow a phrase from my own teacher Dr Kenneth Wapnick.
This memory of God we can never quite forget.
The Course calls this the Holy Spirit and without his help we cannot awaken.
I sometimes refer to the Holy Spirit as our inner guide or teacher or comforter.
The Holy Spirit is aware of heaven and our illusion of separation.
Term six in the clarification of terms in the manual for teacher states,
The Holy Spirit is described as the remaining communication link between God and his separated sons.
In order to fulfill this special function,
The Holy Spirit has assumed a dual function.
He knows because he's part of God,
He perceives because he was sent to save humanity.
The Holy Spirit knows the truth of our oneness with God but also recognizes our illusions so that he can teach us how to overlook them.
Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit and is ever present to help us with our lessons of forgiveness if we but invite him in.
As Jesus has transcended his ego,
His patience is infinite and he will stay with us until the end of time to help us all wake up.
After the seeming separation from God,
Our minds became split into three parts,
The ego,
The Holy Spirit and the sleeping Son of God.
After the seeming separation from God,
Our minds became split into three parts,
The ego,
The Holy Spirit and the sleeping Son of God who has to decide which of the two voices to listen to.
Although the Holy Spirit is always present in our minds ready to teach us another way of looking at the world,
We fear to turn to him for help.
We think we have successfully abandoned God,
Broken up heaven in the process and escaped into our self-made world where he cannot find us.
To have God's representative in our mind,
The voice for God,
Is frightening and we prefer to turn to our ego for help.
After all,
Does not the Holy Spirit work for God?
And if we turn to him for help,
He will punish us for our sins.
Without the Holy Spirit's help,
We are really lost as we have only the advice of the ego left.
The ego is a thought we have made and,
Like any creation,
Wants to live.
Its advice to us is only to ensure its own survival.
Its counsel is there to escape from our dreadful feelings of guilt.
We need to deny the problem and project it onto the world.
Until we learn to try another way,
Forgiveness,
We are doomed to repeat our errors.
This reinforces our guilt,
Which in turn maintains the ego thought system.
The ego's food is guilt and following its advice will always lead to created more guilt.
Although we seem to have achieved the goal of separation and individuality,
We are left feeling that there is something missing in our lives.
We no longer feel complete.
The Holy Spirit would tell us that what is missing is the oneness with all life and God.
But fearing this voice,
We have only the ego thought system to turn to.
The ego tells us that there is something lacking in us and we can only find it by looking in the world for it.
We try to fill the bottomless pits in ourselves by plunging into work,
Eating,
Drinking,
Sex,
Entertainment and above all by falling in love.
Another person or object now becomes our substitute for God,
What the Course describes as a special love relationship.
As long as each person fulfills the needs of the other,
The couple remains content for a time.
But as soon as one breaks this bargain,
The old feeling of emptiness arises.
The door over the inner pain opens again and we try desperately to close it.
Our ego will counsel us to attack the other in the hope that he or she will become guilty enough to change his or her behaviour.
If this fails,
The relationship is likely to end and another sought instead.
At this difficult time,
We could also turn to forgiveness instead of attack.
The strife we are experiencing will seem all too familiar.
We can ask ourselves,
Perhaps there's another way of looking at this situation.
What can I lose by trying?
This is a quote from Lesson 33.
This is an invitation to bring the power of the Holy Spirit into our minds.
Our partner can be transformed from enemy to saviour,
Becoming a mirror to our guilt.
The relationship is now transformed into the goal of a whole relationship,
Where truth and forgiveness,
And not ego,
Needs to take first place.
Nor does it take the other to think this way,
For it is our change of perception that will bring us peace.
The relationship may still end,
But the forgiveness learnt will take us one more step to peace.
We do not have to learn about love,
Truth and joy,
For that was eternally given us and but awaits our welcome.
What we do need to do is to remove the blocks to that awareness,
And that is the role of forgiveness.
Our world is a world where perception rules.
This is unknown in heaven,
In perfect oneness.
There is nothing to perceive.
Our need is to correct our perception with the aid of the Holy Spirit,
Or Jesus.
What we think is what we perceive.
Believing separation to be real,
That is exactly what we perceive around us.
But when we awaken from the dream and realise all is one,
We can only perceive everything as part of ourselves.
To attack another then will be impossible,
As it will seem as if we are stamping on our own feet.
Everyone here perceives a different world,
Because no two people think exactly the same.
We can observe this in ourselves when we change moods.
When we feel happy the world looks a far nicer place,
And when we are distressed.
Forgiveness teaches us that the world but reflects our thinking,
And therefore it is pointless to try to change the world,
To make ourselves happy.
As I quoted earlier,
Rejection makes perception.
Here is a course quote that illustrates this point.
Rejection makes perception.
The world you see is what you gave it,
Nothing more than that.
But though it is no more than that,
It is not less.
Therefore to you it is important.
It is the witness to your state of mind,
The outside picture of an inward condition.
As a man thinketh,
So does he perceive.
Therefore seek not to change the world,
But choose to change your mind about the world.
From the text in A Course in Miracles.
Of course we all have our preferences regarding clothes,
Climate,
Food etc.
Which is normally linked to our conditioning.
There is nothing wrong in this.
However,
Understanding that what we perceive in the world is mirroring our state of mind is the road to lasting peace and joy.
Now we have the power with the aid of the Holy Spirit to change our mind about the world.
We realize it is foolish to blame people and circumstances for our unhappiness.
Nobody and nothing has that power over us.
Until this is seen,
We are forced to defend the world we have made up by using defense and attack.
It takes a lot of work to prop up our illusions about ourselves.
If we are invested in being a victim,
We are forced to see a world populated by persecutors just waiting to have a go at us.
Our perception of the world becomes highly selective,
Filtering out what does not support our beliefs and selecting that which reinforces them.
Life now becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Forgiveness is a process in which we start to recognize our perceptual errors and to decide we wish to see things differently.
As we correct our perceptions,
We begin to undo the blocks we have created and true perception or spiritual vision starts to dawn on our minds.
The world we once saw as a hostile place out to attack us was but merely mirroring our own belief that attack will get us what we want.
When we think anger would get us something of value,
We also believe others will be thinking the same.
This must result in our feeling insecure for now we are waiting to be attacked.
That is why Jesus asks us to teach what we want to learn.
Forgiving the false perception immediately transforms the world we live in.
Now when others attack us,
We can see they think like we once did and do not realize they are actually reinforcing their own sense of vulnerability.
Our new perception is that their attack is a call for our help.
Not that they are aware of this,
Which does not matter.
It is that we are now aware of what they are doing as we have forgiven this behavior in ourselves.
Wishing to reinforce the love,
Wishing to reinforce the love we feel growing within us,
We are happy to extend our love to those who attack us.
The form our behavior will take we cannot know in advance,
But what we have learned is under the direction of the Holy Spirit to which we are learning to turn more and more.
If we are judged or attacked by another,
We may be guided to say something,
To remain silent,
To walk away.
The appropriate loving response will be given if we are open to our inner guide.
To the ego the body is its home.
How the body looks,
What others think of it,
Becomes of prime importance.
When it is sick or in pain,
It is easy for us to focus on the seeming reality of the world.
Now the Holy Spirit seems a liar as we say,
Don't tell me this world is not real,
I'm in pain.
But the body does not have a mind of its own,
It must be told by the sleeping Son of God what it must feel when it is to be born and die,
Whether to be sick or well.
With the ego as our guide we play the game of making our body our reality.
Once we change our allegiance to the Holy Spirit,
The body's function will change.
Now the body is perceived as a loving tool of communication instead of a weapon of attack.
This will also produce gains in vitality and health.
The purpose of the body will change,
No longer being seen as who we think we are.
Instead it becomes a vehicle in which we can learn our lessons in our daily classrooms of forgiveness.
How long this journey home takes is entirely up to us.
All the answers to all our problems exist in this present moment,
Just waiting to be accepted.
The Holy Spirit sees time as an illusion we have made,
As we can have no separate world without it.
The ego relies on its past experience to try and solve present problems and always fails.
The Holy Spirit's answers to our problems are like gifts just waiting to be unwrapped and received.
We do not have to earn them or suffer or pray to receive them,
But simply want them with all our heart.
The Holy Spirit will never go against our free will,
But it will come instantly if he is made wholly welcome.
But while we think we know better and trust the counsel of our ego,
The gifts must wait for the day we are ready to accept them.
These gifts are but various forms of forgiveness,
Perfectly tailored to match the complexity of our problems.
In time we learn His way's works and we turn more and more to Him for help.
Step by step,
As we tread the path of forgiveness,
We will be kindly and gently led from our nightmares to happy dreams of forgiveness.
The world we perceived as dark and threatening will start to be perceived differently.
Former enemies are now perceived as our saviours,
As they offer us the chance to forgive what we have been projecting onto them.
Our days become dedicated to finding peace through forgiveness.
Our bodies gain vitality as they serve a holy purpose,
No longer being perceived as our identity.
When all our lessons are finally learned,
We will perceive that Christ did all things.
We realize that there is none to forgive,
For what God created is perfect and needs no forgiveness.
Further,
Having left our ego behind,
There is nothing unhealed to project and therefore nothing to forgive.
With forgiveness complete,
We enter what the Course calls the real world.
It is still this world,
But seen differently.
Now we walk quietly in peace,
Finding the Christ within our own mind.
It is now impossible to see anything else in the world.
People are perceived as either giving love or asking for it,
As the Course says.
This is the judgment of the Holy Spirit and so becomes ours.
Whether the body lives or dies is not important.
It will be known when it is time to lay it aside,
Just as everything else is known.
Choice is gone,
To be replaced by an uncertainty,
And the need for forgiveness is over.
