A Course In Miracles - Chapter 5, Section IV
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. (Foundation for Inner Peace, 448 Ignacio Blvd #306 Novato, CA 94949 USA). 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 continue today in Chapter 5,
Healing and Wholeness,
Section 4,
Teaching and Healing.
To summarize my takeaways,
In Section 4 of Chapter 5,
We learn that the atonement is our way out of fear.
Through the atonement,
The Holy Spirit reinterprets everything we perceive as fearful and teaches us only what is loving and true.
Every loving thought held in any part of the Sonship belongs to every part,
And sharing is God's way of creating and also ours.
Jesus,
Our brother,
Our guide,
Teaches us here that He made the decision to listen to only one voice because He understood that He could not atone for Himself alone,
And that we forsake ourselves in God if we forsake any of our brothers.
We must learn to see them as they are and understand they belong to God as we do.
God's Wholeness is the Wholeness of His Son.
Your brother cannot hurt you.
Teach him this by showing him only your wholeness and hold nothing against him or you hold it against yourself.
This is the meaning of the term,
Quote,
Turning the other cheek,
End quote.
The Holy Spirit atones in all of us by undoing and lifting the burden we have placed in our own minds.
By following Him,
We are led back to God where we belong,
But we cannot find our way without taking our brothers with us.
Jesus reminds us that all of our past,
Except its beauty,
Is gone.
He has saved all our kindnesses and every loving thought we've ever had.
All that remains is a blessing.
This is the peace of God that He placed in our hearts and in our hands,
And we are asked only to hold it and share it that it may always be ours.
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 definitions of terms you will hear within this reading.
Atonement – the Holy Spirit's plan of correction,
Healing our minds from the earthly world of illusion to God's world of truth.
Holy Spirit – the communication link between God and us,
Bridging the gap between the mind of Christ and our human minds.
Through this bridge,
Our worldly perception of sin,
Guilt,
And fear is transformed into the reality of love and forgiveness.
Kingdom – the non-dualistic world of knowledge wherein God and His creations dwell in perfect unity.
Unwanted – the creation of God.
And now,
Onto the reading.
A Course in Miracles Chapter 5 – Healing and Wholeness Section 4 – Teaching and Healing What fear has hidden still is part of you.
Joining the atonement is the way out of fear.
The Holy Spirit will help you reinterpret everything that you perceive as fearful and teach you that only what is loving is true.
Truth is beyond your ability to destroy,
But entirely within your ability to accept.
It belongs to you because,
As an extension of God,
You created it with Him.
It is yours because it is part of you,
Just as you are part of God because He created you.
Nothing that is good can be lost because it comes from the Holy Spirit,
The voice for creation.
Nothing that is not good was ever created and,
Therefore,
Cannot be protected.
The atonement is the guarantee of the safety of the Kingdom and the union of the Sonship is its protection.
The ego cannot prevail against the Kingdom because the Sonship is united.
In the presence of those who hear the Holy Spirit's call to be as one,
The ego fades away and is undone.
What the ego makes it keeps to itself and so it is without strength.
Its existence is unshared.
It does not die.
It was merely never born.
Physical birth is not a beginning.
It is a continuing.
Everything that continues has already been born.
It will increase as you are willing to return the unhealed part of your mind to the higher part,
Returning it undivided to creation.
I have come to give you the foundation so your own thoughts can make you really free.
You have carried the burden of unshared ideas that are too weak to increase,
But having made them,
You did not realize how to undo them.
You cannot cancel out your past errors alone.
They will not disappear from your mind without the atonement,
A remedy not of your making.
The atonement must be understood as a pure act of sharing.
That is what I meant when I said it is possible,
Even in this world,
To listen to one voice.
If you are part of God and the Sonship is one,
You cannot be limited to the self the ego sees.
Every loving thought held in any part of the Sonship belongs to every part.
It is shared because it is loving.
Sharing is God's way of creating and also yours.
The ego can keep you in exile from the kingdom,
But in the kingdom itself,
It has no power.
Ideas of the Spirit do not leave the mind that thinks them,
Nor can they conflict with each other.
However,
Ideas of the ego can conflict because they occur at different levels and also include opposite thoughts at the same level.
It is impossible to share opposing thoughts.
You can share only the thoughts that are of God and that He keeps for you,
And of such as the kingdom of heaven.
The rest remains with you until the Holy Spirit has reinterpreted them in the light of the kingdom,
Making them too worthy of being shared.
When they have been sufficiently purified,
He lets you give them away.
The decision to share them is their purification.
I heard one voice because I understood that I could not atone for myself alone.
Listening to one voice implies the decision to share it in order to hear it yourself.
The mind that was in me is still irresistibly drawn to every mind created by God because God's wholeness is the wholeness of His Son.
You cannot be hurt,
And you do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness.
Show him that he cannot hurt you,
And hold nothing against him,
Or you hold it against yourself.
This is the meaning of,
Quote,
Turning the other cheek,
End quote.
Teaching is done in many ways.
Above all,
By example.
Teaching should be healing because it is the sharing of ideas,
And the recognition that to share ideas is to strengthen them.
I cannot forget my need to teach what I have learned,
Which arose in me because I learned it.
I call upon you to teach what you have learned because by doing so,
You can depend on it.
Make it dependable in my name because my name is the name of God's Son.
What I learned,
I give you freely,
And the mind that was in me rejoices as you choose to hear it.
The Holy Spirit atones in all of us by undoing,
And thus lifts the burden you have placed in your mind.
By following Him,
You are led back to God where you belong,
And how can you find the way except by taking your brother with you?
My part in the atonement is not complete until you join it and give it away.
As you teach,
So shall you learn.
I will never leave you or forsake you because to forsake you would be to forsake myself and God who created me.
You forsake yourself and God if you forsake any of your brothers.
You must learn to see them as they are and understand they belong to God as you do.
How could you treat your brother better than by rendering unto God the things that are God's?
The atonement gives you the power of a healed mind,
But the power to create is of God.
Therefore,
Those who have been forgiven must devote themselves first to healing because having received the idea of healing,
They must give it to hold it.
The full power of creation cannot be expressed as long as any of God's ideas is withheld from the kingdom.
The joint will of the Sonship is the only Creator that can create like the Father because only the complete can think completely and the thinking of God likes nothing.
Everything you think that is not through the Holy Spirit is lacking.
How can you who are so holy suffer?
All your past except its beauty is gone and nothing is left but a blessing.
I have saved all your kindness and every loving thought that you ever had.
I have purified them of the errors that hid their light and kept them for you in their own perfect radiance.
They are beyond destruction and beyond guilt.
They came from the Holy Spirit within you and we know what God creates is eternal.
You can indeed depart in peace because I have loved you as I loved myself.
You go with my blessing and for my blessing.
Hold it and share it that it may always be ours.
I place the peace of God in your heart and in your hands to hold and share.
The heart is pure to hold it and the hands are strong to give it.
We cannot lose.
My judgment is as strong as the wisdom of God in whose heart and hands we have our being.
His quiet children are his blessed sons.
The thoughts of God are with you.
