A Course In Miracles - Chapter 12, Section I
ACIM is read one section at a time. It is a guidebook leading us back to our true natures, as we open to the awareness of love's presence. All quoted material is from A Course in Miracles, copyright ©1992, 1999, 2007 by the Foundation for Inner Peace, publisher, and the copyright holder. This material is used with permission. Glossary-Index for a Course In Miracles, 8th edition, Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D. Music by Bensound.
Transcript
Hi,
I'm Teresa Hubbard.
Welcome back to our continued reading of the text to A Course in Miracles.
We begin today in Chapter 12,
The Holy Spirit's Curriculum.
Section 1,
The Judgment of the Holy Spirit.
To summarize my takeaways,
In Section 1 of Chapter 12,
We are reminded that we must not make error real.
If we want to believe in error,
We are responsible for making it real,
Because it is not true.
We must come to understand that we do not respond to anything directly,
But to our interpretation of it.
Our interpretation,
Then,
Becomes the justification of our response.
For when we interpret error,
We are giving it power,
And thus we overlook truth.
Therefore,
Analyzing the motives of others is hazardous to us.
We are told not to judge what we do not understand,
For no one with a personal investment is a reliable witness,
For truth has become what we want it to be.
We must come to know that every loving thought is true.
Everything else is an appeal for healing and help,
Regardless of the form it takes.
But we must not attempt to help a brother in our way,
For we cannot help ourself.
If we are unwilling to perceive an appeal for help as what it is,
It is because we are unwilling to give help and to receive it.
We must know that if we hear our brother's call for the help of God,
We will recognize our own need for the Father.
For the sake of our own need,
Then,
We must hear every call for help as what it is,
So God can answer us.
For only by answering our brother's appeal for help can we be helped.
All our sense of strain comes from our attempts not to do just this.
How simple,
Then,
Is God's plan for salvation?
Consider how well the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the motives of others will serve us,
Then.
Having taught us to accept only loving thoughts in others,
And to regard everything else as an appeal for help,
The Holy Spirit has taught us that fear itself is an appeal for help.
This is what recognizing fear really means.
If we do not protect it,
The Holy Spirit will reinterpret it for us.
Thus,
Does the Holy Spirit replace fear with love and translate error into truth.
I invite you to keep a few things in mind as you listen to the reading.
The course uses male pronouns,
Yet this is simply a way of pointing to the spiritual being,
Having no gender.
The course is written in first person,
And although not introduced directly to the reader,
It becomes clear that the words are from Jesus,
Often quoting from the Bible.
The course uses traditional Christian terms in a non-traditional manner.
These words are simply pointers to truth,
Nothing more.
A few terms you will hear within this reading.
Reality.
Pure spirit,
Which is changeless,
Eternal,
Formless,
And boundless.
Reality is also referred to in the course as heaven or the kingdom of God.
Holy Spirit,
The communication link between God and us.
Bridging the gap between the mind of Christ and our human minds.
The voice for God.
Salvation.
We are saved from our belief in sin and guilt through the change of mind that forgiveness and the miracle bring about.
God,
The creator,
The source of all being or life.
God's essence is spirit,
Which is shared with all creation.
Yet the word God can be limiting,
Since universal energy and life are infinitely vast and cannot be contained in a word.
And now,
On to the reading.
A Course in Miracles,
Chapter 12,
The Holy Spirit's Curriculum.
Section 1,
The Judgment of the Holy Spirit.
You have been told not to make error real,
And the way to do this is very simple.
If you want to believe in error,
You would have to make it real,
Because it is not true.
But truth is real in its own right,
And to believe in truth,
You do not have to do anything.
Understand that you do not respond to anything directly,
But to your interpretation of it.
Your interpretation thus becomes the justification for the response.
That is why analyzing the motives of others is hazardous to you.
If you decide that someone is really trying to attack you,
Or desert you,
Or enslave you,
You will respond as if he had actually done so,
Having made his error real to you.
To interpret error is to give it power,
And having done this,
You will overlook truth.
The analysis of ego motivation is very complicated,
Very obscuring,
And never without your own ego involvement.
The whole process represents a clear-cut attempt to demonstrate your own ability to understand what you perceive.
This is shown by the fact that you react to your interpretations as if they were correct.
You may then control your reactions behaviorally,
But not emotionally.
This would obviously be a split,
Or an attack on the integrity of your mind,
Pitting one level within it against another.
There is but one interpretation of motivation that makes any sense,
And because it is the Holy Spirit's judgment,
It requires no effort at all on your part.
Every loving thought is true.
Everything else is an appeal for healing and help,
Regardless of the form it takes.
Can anyone be justified in responding with anger to a brother's plea for help?
No response can be appropriate except the willingness to give it to him,
For this and only this is what he is asking for.
Offer him anything else,
And you are assuming the right to attack his reality by interpreting as you see fit.
Perhaps the danger of this to your own mind is not yet fully apparent.
If you believe that an appeal for help is something else,
You will react to something else.
Your response will therefore be inappropriate to reality as it is,
But not to your perception of it.
There is nothing to prevent you from recognizing all calls for help as exactly what they are,
Except your own imagined need to attack.
It is only this that makes you willing to engage in endless battles with reality,
In which you deny the reality of the need for healing by making it unreal.
You would not do this except for your unwillingness to accept reality as it is,
And which you therefore withhold from yourself.
It is surely good advice to tell you not to judge what you do not understand.
No one with a personal investment is a reliable witness,
For truth to him has become what he wants it to be.
If you are unwilling to perceive an appeal for help as what it is,
It is because you are unwilling to give help and to receive it.
To fail to recognize a call for help is to refuse help.
Would you maintain that you do not need it?
Yet this is what you are maintaining when you refuse to recognize a brother's appeal,
For only by answering his appeal can you be helped.
Deny him your help and you will not recognize God's answer to you.
The Holy Spirit does not need your help in interpreting motivation,
But you do need the Holy Spirit's.
Only appreciation is an appropriate response to your brother.
Let His do him for both his loving thoughts and his appeals for help,
For both are capable of bringing love into your awareness if you perceive them truly.
And all your sense of strain comes from your attempts not to do just this.
How simple then is God's plan for salvation?
There is but one response to reality,
For reality evokes no conflict at all.
There is but one teacher of reality who understands what it is.
He does not change his mind about reality,
Because reality does not change.
Although your interpretations of reality are meaningless in your divided state,
His remain consistently true.
He gives them to you,
Because they are for you.
Do not attempt to help a brother in your way,
For you cannot help yourself.
But hear his call for the help of God,
And you will recognize your own need for the Father.
Your interpretations of your brother's needs are your interpretation of yours.
By giving help,
You are asking for it,
And if you perceive but one need in yourself,
You will be healed.
For you will recognize God's answer as you want it to be,
And if you want it in truth,
It will be truly yours.
Every appeal you answer in the name of Christ brings the remembrance of your Father closer to your awareness.
For the sake of your need then,
Hear every call for help as what it is,
So God can answer you.
By applying the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the reaction of others more and more consistently,
You will gain an increasing awareness that His criteria are equally applicable to you.
For to recognize fear is not enough to escape from it,
Although the recognition is necessary to demonstrate the need for escape.
The Holy Spirit must still translate the fear into truth.
If you were left with the fear,
Once you had recognized it,
You would have taken a step away from reality,
Not towards it.
Yet we have repeatedly emphasized the need to recognize fear and face it without disguise as a crucial step in the undoing of the ego.
Consider how well the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the motives of others will serve you then.
Having taught you to accept only loving thoughts in others and to regard everything else as an appeal for help,
He has taught you that fear itself is an appeal for help.
This is what recognizing fear really means.
If you do not protect it,
He will reinterpret it.
That is the ultimate value in learning to perceive attack as a call for love.
We have already learned that fear and attack are inevitably associated.
If only attack produces fear,
And if you see attack as the call for help that it is,
The unreality of fear must dawn on you.
For fear is a call for love,
An unconscious recognition of what has been denied.
Fear is a symptom of your own deep sense of loss.
If when you perceive it in others,
You learn to supply the loss,
The basic cause of fear is removed.
Thereby,
You teach yourself that fear does not exist in you.
The means for removing it is in yourself,
And you have demonstrated this by giving it.
Fear and love are the only emotions of which you are capable.
Fear and love are the only emotions of which you are capable.
Fear and love are the only emotions of which you are capable.
Fear and love are the only emotions of which you are capable.
Fear and love are the only emotions of which you are capable.
When you raise what fear conceals to clear-cut unequivocal predominance,
Fear becomes meaningless.
You have denied its power to conceal love,
Which was its only purpose.
The veil that you have drawn across the face of love has disappeared.
If you would look upon love,
Which is the world's reality,
How could you do better than to recognize,
In every defense against it,
The underlying appeal for it?
And how could you better learn of its reality than by answering the appeal for it by giving it?
The Holy Spirit's interpretation of fear does dispel it,
For the awareness of truth cannot be denied.
Thus does the Holy Spirit replace fear with love and translate error into truth.
And thus will you learn of Him how to replace your dream of separation with the fact of unity.
For the separation is only the denial of union,
And correctly interpreted,
Attests to your eternal knowledge that union is true.
