Hi,
I'm Teresa Hubbard.
Welcome back to our continued reading of the text,
To A Course in Miracles.
We continue today in Chapter 12,
The Holy Spirit's Curriculum.
Section 8,
The Attraction of Love for Love.
To summarize my takeaways,
In Section 8 of Chapter 12,
We are reminded that we attack the real world every hour of every day,
Yet we are surprised that we cannot see it.
We learn here that if we seek love in order to attack it,
We will never find it,
For love is sharing.
So how can we find it except through itself?
When we offer love,
It will come to us,
Because it is drawn to itself.
But when we offer attack,
Love will remain hidden,
For it can only live in peace.
When we make visible what is not true,
What is true becomes invisible to us.
Yet what is true cannot be invisible,
Because the Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity.
It is invisible to us,
Because we are looking at something else.
We are reminded that we who cannot even control ourselves should hardly aspire to control the universe.
We are lovingly reminded to look upon what we have made and rejoice that it is not so,
For by making nothing real to us,
We have seen it,
But it is not there.
And Christ is therefore invisible to us because of what we have made visible to ourselves.
The good news is that what God did not give us has no power over us,
And the attraction of love for love is irresistible.
We are reminded here that the real world was given to us by God in loving exchange for the world we made and the world we see.
We must take our reality only from the hand of Christ and look upon it.
Christ's reality will make everything else invisible.
The atonement is but the way back to what was never lost.
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.
Son of God.
All of us,
The creations of God.
Real world.
Through total forgiveness,
We are released from our perception of sin and guilt,
Allowing us to see through the vision of Christ,
Which blesses rather than condemns.
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.
The Holy Spirit's plan of correction,
Healing our minds from the earthly world of illusion to God's world of truth.
And now,
On to the reading.
A Course in Miracles,
Chapter 12.
The Holy Spirit's Curriculum.
Section 8.
The Attraction of Love for Love.
Do you really believe that you can kill the Son of God?
The Father has hidden His Son safely within Himself and kept Him far away from your destructive thoughts.
But you know neither the Father nor the Son because of your destructive thoughts.
You attack the real world every day,
Every hour,
And every minute.
And yet you are surprised that you cannot see it.
If you seek love in order to attack it,
You will never find it.
For if love is sharing,
How can you find it except through itself?
Offer it,
And it will come to you,
Because it is drawn to itself.
But offer attack,
And love will remain hidden,
For it can live only in peace.
God's Son is as safe as His Father,
For the Son knows His Father's protection and cannot fear.
His Father's love holds Him in perfect peace,
And needing nothing,
He asks for nothing.
But He is far from you,
Whose self He is,
For you chose to attack Him,
And He disappeared from your sight into His Father.
He did not change,
But you did.
For a split mind and all its works were not created by the Father,
And could not live in the knowledge of Him.
When you made visible what is not true,
What is true became invisible to you.
But it cannot be invisible in itself,
For the Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity.
It is invisible to you,
Because you are looking at something else.
Yet it is no more up to you to decide what is visible and what is invisible than it is up to you to decide what reality is.
What can be seen is what the Holy Spirit sees.
The definition of reality is God's,
Not yours.
He created it,
And He knows what it is.
You who know have forgotten,
And unless He had given you a way to remember,
You would have condemned yourself to oblivion.
Because of your Father's love,
You can never forget Him,
For no one can forget what God Himself placed in His memory.
You can deny it,
But you cannot lose it.
A voice will answer every question you ask,
And a vision will correct the perception of everything you see.
For what you have made invisible is the only truth,
And what you have not heard is the only answer.
God would reunite you with yourself and did not abandon you in your distress.
You are waiting only for Him and do not know it,
Yet His memory shines in your mind and cannot be obliterated.
It is no more past than future,
Being forever always.
You have but to ask for this memory,
And you will remember.
Yet the memory of God cannot shine in a mind that has obliterated it and wants to keep it so.
For the memory of God can dawn only in a mind that chooses to remember,
And that has relinquished the insane desire to control reality.
You who cannot even control yourself should hardly aspire to control the universe.
But look upon what you have made of it and rejoice that it is not so.
Son of God,
Be not content with nothing.
What is not real cannot be seen and has no value.
God could not offer His Son what has no value,
Nor could His Son receive it.
You were redeemed the instant you thought you had deserted Him.
Everything you made has never been,
And is invisible because the Holy Spirit does not see it.
Yet what He does see is yours to behold,
And through His vision your perception is healed.
You have made invisible the only truth that this world holds.
Valuing nothing,
You have sought nothing.
By making nothing real to you,
You have seen it.
But it is not there.
And Christ is invisible to you because what you have made visible to yourself.
Yet it does not matter how much distance you have tried to interpose between your awareness and truth.
God's Son can be seen because His vision is shared.
The Holy Spirit looks upon Him and sees nothing else in you.
What is invisible to you is perfect in His sight and encompasses all of it.
He has remembered you because He forgot not the Father.
You looked upon the unreal and found despair.
And by seeking the unreal,
What else could you find?
The unreal world is a thing of despair,
For it can never be.
And you who share God's being with Him could never be content without reality.
What God did not give you has no power over you.
And the attraction of love for love remains irresistible,
For it is the function of love to unite all things unto itself and to hold all things together by extending its wholeness.
The real world was given you by God in loving exchange for the world you made and the world you see.
Only take it from the hand of Christ and look upon it.
Its reality will make everything else invisible,
For beholding it is total perception.
And as you look upon it,
You will remember that it was always so.
Nothingness will become invisible,
For you will at last have seen truly.
Redeemed perception is easily translated into knowledge,
For only perception is capable of error,
And perception has never been.
Being corrected,
It gives place to knowledge,
Which is forever the only reality.
The atonement is but the way back to what was never lost.
Your father could never cease to love his son.
