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 6,
Time and Eternity.
To summarize my takeaways,
In Section 6 of Chapter 5,
Jesus reminds us that when He said,
I come as a light into the world,
He meant that He came to share the light with us.
He reminds us that the mind that was in Him is also in us.
We've spoken before about the two voices within us.
One voice speaks for God,
Referred to as the Holy Spirit,
And the other voice we made,
Referred to as the ego.
We are told that our future will be like the past until we make the choice to listen only to the voice for God,
Which exchanges the ego's guilt for joy,
Its viciousness for love,
And its pain for peace.
Nothing the ego perceives is interpreted correctly.
Not only does the ego cite Scripture for its purpose,
It even interprets Scripture as a witness for itself,
Making the Bible a fearful thing in the ego's judgment.
The ego's decision then,
Rooted in fear,
Is to speak in judgment.
Yet the Holy Spirit reverses the ego's decision,
Much as a higher court reverses the decision of a lower court in this world,
Reinterpreting our perceptions and releasing us from fear.
We are reminded that where we look to find ourselves is always up to us.
But the Holy Spirit,
Given to us freely by God,
Will always remind us,
Thine is the kingdom,
Because the Holy Spirit was given to us to remind us of who we are.
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.
Knowledge – also referred to as heaven or the real world.
It is the pre-separation world of God and His unified creation in which there are no differences in form and therefore exclusive of the world of perception.
Kingdom – the non-dualistic world of knowledge,
Wherein God and His creations dwell in perfect unity.
Time – a learning device,
A means of undoing the ego by choosing love and forgiveness of ourselves and others.
Eternity – a state completely outside of time,
Having no past and no future,
No beginning and no end,
Only always.
It represents the single instant of the limitless present.
This definition has been adapted from a definition written by Robert Perry on the website Circle of Atonement,
Which can be found at www.
Circleofa.
Org.
And now,
On to the reading.
A Course in Miracles Chapter 5 – Healing and Wholeness Section 6 – Time and Eternity God in His knowledge is not waiting,
But His Kingdom is bereft while you wait.
All the sons of God are waiting for your return,
Just as you are waiting for theirs.
Delay does not matter in eternity,
But it is tragic in time.
You have elected to be in time rather than eternity and therefore you believe you are in time.
Yet your election is both free and alterable.
You do not belong in time.
Your place is only in eternity where God Himself placed you forever.
Public feelings are the preservers of time.
They induce fears of retaliation or abandonment and thus ensure that the future will be like the past.
This is the ego's continuity.
It gives the ego a false sense of security by believing that you cannot escape from it.
But you can and must.
God offers you the continuity of eternity in exchange.
When you choose to make this exchange,
You will simultaneously exchange guilt for joy,
Viciousness for love,
And pain for peace.
My role is to unchain your will and set it free.
Your ego cannot accept this freedom and will oppose it at every possible moment and in every possible way.
And as its maker,
You recognize what it can do because you gave it the power to do it.
Remember the kingdom always and remember that you who are part of the kingdom cannot be lost.
The mind that was in me is in you,
For God creates with perfect fairness.
Let the Holy Spirit remind you always of His fairness and let me teach you how to share it with your brothers.
How else can the chance to claim it for yourself be given you?
The two voices speak for different interpretations of the same thing simultaneously or almost simultaneously for the ego always speaks first.
Alternate interpretations were unnecessary until the first one was made.
The ego speaks in judgment and the Holy Spirit reverses its decision much as a higher court has the power to reverse a lower court's decision in this world.
The ego's decisions are always wrong because they are based on the error they were made to uphold.
Everything the ego perceives is interpreted correctly.
Not only does the ego cite scripture for its purpose,
But it even interprets scripture as a witness for itself.
The Bible is a fearful thing in the ego's judgment.
Perceiving it as frightening,
It interprets it fearfully.
Being afraid,
You do not appeal to the higher court because you believe its judgment would also be against you.
There are many examples of how the ego's interpretations are misleading,
But a few will suffice to show how the Holy Spirit can reinterpret them in his own light.
As ye sow,
So shall ye reap.
The Holy Spirit interprets to mean what you consider worth cultivating you will cultivate in yourself.
Your judgment of what is worthy makes it worthy for you.
Vengeance is mine,
Saith the Lord,
Is easily reinterpreted if you remember that ideas increase only by being shared.
The statement emphasizes that vengeance cannot be shared.
Give it therefore to the Holy Spirit who will undo it in you because it does not belong in your mind,
Which is part of God.
I will visit the sins of the fathers under the third and fourth generation,
As interpreted by the ego is particularly vicious.
It becomes merely an attempt to guarantee the ego's own survival.
To the Holy Spirit,
The statement means that in later generations he can still reinterpret what former generations had misunderstood and thus release the thoughts from the ability to produce fear.
The wicked shall perish,
Becomes a statement of atonement if the word perish is understood as be undone.
Every loveless thought must be undone,
A word the ego cannot even understand.
To the ego to be undone means to be destroyed.
The ego will not be destroyed because it is part of your thought.
But because it is uncreative and therefore unsharing,
It will be reinterpreted to release you from fear.
The part of your mind that you have given to the ego will merely return to the kingdom where your whole mind belongs.
You can delay the completion of the kingdom,
But you cannot introduce the concept of fear into it.
You need not fear the higher court will condemn you.
It will merely dismiss the case against you.
There can be no case against the child of God.
And every witness to guilt in God's creations is bearing false witness to God himself.
Appeal everything you believe gladly to God's own higher court because it speaks for him and therefore speaks truly.
It will dismiss the case against you,
However carefully you have built it up.
The case may be foolproof,
But it is not God proof.
The Holy Spirit will not hear it because he can only witness truly.
His verdict will always be,
Quote,
Thine is the kingdom,
End quote,
Because he was given to you to remind you of what you are.
When I said,
Quote,
I am come as a light into the world,
End quote,
I meant that I came to share the light with you.
Remember my reference to the ego's dark glass and remember also that I said,
Do not look there.
It is still true that where you look to find yourself is up to you.
Your patience with your brother is your patience with yourself.
Is not a child of God worth patience?
I have shown you infinite patience because my will is that of our Father from whom I learned of infinite patience.
His voice was in me as it is in you,
Speaking for patience towards the sonship in the name of its creator.
Now you must learn that only infinite patience produces immediate effects.
This is the way in which time is exchanged for eternity.
Infinite patience calls upon infinite love and by producing results now,
It renders time unnecessary.
We have repeatedly said that time is a learning device to be abolished when it is no longer useful.
The Holy Spirit who speaks for God in time also knows that time is meaningless.
He reminds you of this in every passing moment of time because it is his special function to return you to eternity and remain to bless your creations there.
He is the only blessing you can truly give because he is truly blessed.
Because he has been given you freely by God,
You must give him as you received him.
