A Course In Miracles - Chapter 13, Section XI
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: Bensound.
Transcript
Hi,
I'm Teresa Hubbard.
Welcome back to our continued reading of the text to A Course in Miracles.
We continue today in Chapter 13,
The Guiltless World.
Section 11,
The Peace of Heaven.
To summarize my takeaways,
In Section 11 of Chapter 13,
We learn that we,
Whose minds are darkened by doubt and guilt,
Must remember this.
God gave us the Holy Spirit,
The voice for God,
Whose mission is to remove all doubt and every trace of guilt that we have laid upon ourselves.
God would not have us embattled,
And so we must realize that our imagined enemy is totally unreal.
Contrast and differences are necessary teaching aids in this world,
For by them we learn what to avoid and what to seek.
Yet the communication link that God placed within us,
The Holy Spirit,
Will teach us of the peace within us,
And by our sharing it,
We come to recognize that it is within us.
When we have learned this and accepted it,
Truth will flow over us without a difference of any kind,
For we no longer will need contrast to help us realize that peace is what we want and only peace.
The sense of peace within us is so deep that no dream in this world has ever brought even a dim imagining of what it is.
This truth is our release,
And the only truth in which the peace of heaven lies.
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,
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.
The two teachers are the ego and the Holy Spirit.
The ego is our belief in the separated or false self that we made as a substitute for the self that God created.
The Holy Spirit is the communication link between God and us,
Bridging the gap between the mind of Christ and our human minds,
The voice for God.
Heaven,
The real world where God and His creations dwell in perfect unity.
Real world,
Through total forgiveness we are released from our perception of guilt,
Allowing us to see through the vision of Christ,
Which blesses rather than condemns.
Salvation,
We are saved from our belief in sin and guilt through the change of mind that forgiveness and the miracle bring about.
And now,
On to the reading.
A Course in Miracles,
Chapter 13,
The Guiltless World.
Section 11,
The Peace of Heaven.
Forgetfulness and sleep,
And even death,
Become the ego's best advice for dealing with the perceived and harsh intrusion of guilt on peace.
Yet no one sees himself in conflict and ravaged by a cruel war,
Unless he believes that both opponents in the war are real.
Accepting this,
He must escape,
For such a war would surely end his peace of mind and so destroy him.
Yet if he could but realize the wars between real and unreal powers,
He could look upon himself and see his freedom.
No one finds himself ravaged and torn in endless battles,
If he himself perceives them as holy without meaning.
God would not have his son embattled,
And so his son's imagined enemy is totally unreal.
You are but trying to escape a bitter war,
From which you have escaped.
The war is gone.
For you have heard the hymn of freedom rising unto heaven.
Gladness and joy belong to God for your release,
Because you made it not.
Yet as you made not freedom,
So you made not a war that could endanger freedom.
Nothing destructive ever was or will be.
The war,
The guilt,
The past,
Are gone,
As one,
Into the unreality from which they came.
When we are all united in heaven,
You will value nothing that you value here.
For nothing that you value here do you value holy,
And so you do not value it at all.
Value is where God placed it,
And the value of what God esteems cannot be judged,
For what has been established,
It is wholly of value.
It can merely be appreciated or not.
To value it partially is not to know its value.
In heaven is everything God values and nothing else.
Heaven is perfectly unambiguous.
Everything is clear and bright and calls forth one response.
There is no darkness and there is no contrast.
There is no variation.
There is no interruption.
There is a sense of peace so deep that no dream in this world has ever brought even a dim imagining of what it is.
Nothing in this world can give this peace,
For nothing in this world is wholly shared.
Perfect perception can merely show you what is capable of being wholly shared.
It can also show you the results of sharing,
While you still remember the results of not sharing.
The Holy Spirit points quietly to the contrast,
Knowing that you will finally let Him judge the difference for you,
Allowing Him to demonstrate which must be true.
He has perfect faith in your final judgment,
Because He knows that He will make it for you.
To doubt this would be to doubt that His mission will be fulfilled.
How is this possible,
When His mission is of God?
You whose mind is darkened by doubt and guilt,
Remember this.
God gave you the Holy Spirit and gave Him the mission to remove all doubt and every trace of guilt that His dear Son has laid upon Himself.
It is impossible that this mission fail.
Nothing can prevent what God would have accomplished from accomplishment.
Whatever your reactions to the Holy Spirit's voice may be,
Whatever you choose to listen to,
Whatever strange thoughts may occur to you,
God's will is done.
You will find the peace in which He has established you,
Because He does not change His mind.
He is invariable as the peace in which you dwell and of which the Holy Spirit reminds you.
You will not remember change and shift in Heaven.
You have need of contrast only here.
Contrast and differences are necessary teaching aids,
For by them you learn what to avoid and what to seek.
When you have learned this,
You will find the answer that makes the need for any differences disappear.
Truth comes of its own,
Will unto its own.
When you have learned that you belong to truth,
It will flow lightly over you without a difference of any kind,
For you will need no contrast to help you realize that this is what you want and only this.
Fear not the Holy Spirit will fail in what your Father has given Him to do.
The will of God can fail in nothing.
Have faith in only this one thing,
And it will be sufficient.
God wills you be in Heaven,
And nothing can keep you from it or it from you.
Your wildest misperceptions,
Your weird imaginings,
Your blackest nightmares all mean nothing.
They will not prevail against the peace God wills for you.
The Holy Spirit will restore your sanity,
Because insanity is not the will of God.
If that suffices Him,
It is enough for you.
You will not keep what God would have removed,
Because it breaks communication with you with whom He would communicate.
His voice will be heard.
The communication link that God Himself placed within you,
Joining your mind with His,
Cannot be broken.
You may believe you want it broken,
And this belief does interfere with the deep peace in which the sweet and constant communication God would share with you is known.
Yet His channels of reaching out cannot be wholly closed and separated from Him.
Peace will be yours,
Because His peace still flows to you from Him whose will is peace.
You have it now.
The Holy Spirit will teach you how to use it,
And by extending it,
To learn that it is in you.
God willed you heaven,
And will always will you nothing else.
The Holy Spirit knows only of His will.
There is no chance that heaven will not be yours,
For God is sure,
And what He wills is as sure as He is.
You will learn salvation,
Because you will learn how to save.
It will not be possible to exempt yourself from what the Holy Spirit wants to teach you.
Salvation is as sure as God.
His certainty suffices.
Learn that even the darkest nightmares that disturbs the mind of God's sleeping Son holds no power over Him.
He will learn the lesson of awakening.
God watches over Him,
And light surrounds Him.
Can God's Son lose Himself in dreams,
When God has placed within Him the glad call to awaken and be glad?
He cannot separate Himself from what is in Him.
His sleep will not withstand the call to wake.
The mission of redemption will be fulfilled as surely as the creation will remain unchanged throughout eternity.
You do not have to know that heaven is yours to make it so.
It is so.
Yet to know it,
The will of God must be accepted as your will.
The Holy Spirit will undo for you everything you have learned that teaches what is not true must be reconciled with truth.
This is the reconciliation the ego would substitute for your reconciliation to sanity and to peace.
The Holy Spirit has a very different kind of reconciliation in His mind for you and one He will affect as surely as the ego will not affect what it attempts.
Failure is of the ego,
Not of God.
From Him you cannot wander,
And there is no possibility that the plan the Holy Spirit offers to everyone for the salvation of everyone will not be perfectly accomplished.
You will be released,
And you will not remember anything you made that was not created for you and by you in return.
For how can you remember what was never true,
Or not remember what has always been?
It is this reconciliation with truth and only truth in which the peace of heaven lies.
