Hi,
I'm Teresa Hubbard.
Welcome back to our continued reading of the text to A Course in Miracles.
We continue today in Chapter 8,
The Journey Back.
Section 5,
The Undivided Will of the Sonship To summarize my takeaways,
In Section 5 of Chapter 8,
Jesus,
Our Brother and Guide,
Reminds us that alone we can do nothing,
But that together our minds fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts.
We are asked to offer our brothers our unified mind on their behalf,
As He has offered us His on our own behalf.
The undivided will of the Sonship is the perfect Creator,
Being holy in the likeness of God.
We cannot be exempt from it if we are to understand what it is and what we are.
Therefore,
To heal is to unite with our brothers,
Because perceiving their likeness to us is to recognize our Father.
If our perfection is in Him and only in Him,
How can we know it without recognizing Him in ourselves and others?
Jesus tells us here that He only offers us the recognition of God's power in us,
But that in this lies all truth.
We must ask ourselves if we know the will of God for us,
And when in doubt,
We are invited to ask it of Him who knows it for us so that we can find it again.
Ours is simply the journey back to God who is our home.
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 term 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.
And now,
On to the reading.
A Course in Miracles Chapter 8,
The Journey Back.
Section 5,
The Undivided Will of the Sonship.
Can you be separated from your identification and be at peace?
Dissociation is not a solution,
It is a delusion.
The delusion will believe that truth will assail them,
And they do not recognize it because they prefer the delusion.
Judging truth as something they do not want,
They perceive their illusions,
Which block knowledge.
Help them by offering them your unified mind on their behalf,
As I am offering you mine on behalf of yours.
Alone,
We can do nothing,
But together our minds fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts.
By not being separate,
The mind of God is established in ours and as ours.
This mind is invincible because it is undivided.
The undivided will of the Sonship is the perfect Creator,
Being holy in the likeness of God,
Whose will it is.
You cannot be exempt from it if you are to understand what it is and what you are.
By the belief that your will is separate from mine,
You are exempting yourself from the will of God,
Which is yourself.
Yet to heal is to make whole.
Therefore to heal is to unite with those who are like you,
Because perceiving this likeness is to recognize the Father.
If your perfection is in Him and only in Him,
How can you know it without recognizing Him?
The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself.
There is no separation of God in His creation.
You will realize this when you understand that there is no separation between your will and mine.
Let the love of God shine upon you by your acceptance of Me.
My reality is yours and His.
By joining your mind with Mine,
You are signifying your awareness that the will of God is one.
God's oneness and ours are not separate,
Because His oneness encompasses ours.
To join with Me is to restore His power to you,
Because we are sharing it.
I offer you only the recognition of His power in you,
But in that lies all truth.
As we unite,
We unite with Him.
Glory be to the union of God and His holy sons.
All glory lies in them,
Because they are united.
The miracles we do bear witness to the will of the Father for His Son and to our joy in uniting with His will for us.
When you unite with Me,
You are uniting without the ego,
Because I have renounced the ego in myself and therefore cannot unite with yours.
Our union is therefore the way to renounce the ego in you.
The truth in both of us is beyond the ego.
Our success in transcending the ego is guaranteed by God,
And I share this confidence for both of us and all of us.
I bring God's peace back to all His children because I received it of Him for us all.
Nothing can prevail against our united wills because nothing can prevail against God's.
Would you know the will of God for you?
Ask it of Me,
Who know it for you,
And you will find it.
I will deny you nothing,
As God denies Me nothing.
Ours is simply the journey back to God,
Who is our home.
Whenever fear intrudes anywhere along the road to peace,
It is because the ego has attempted to join the journey with us and cannot do so.
Sensing defeat and angered by it,
The ego regards itself as rejected and becomes retaliative.
You are invulnerable to its retaliation because I am with you.
On this journey you have chosen Me as your companion instead of the ego.
Do not attempt to hold on to both or you will try to go in different directions and will lose the way.
The ego's way is not Mine,
But it is also not yours.
The Holy Spirit has one direction for all minds,
And the one He taught Me is yours.
Let us not lose sight of His direction through illusions,
For only illusions of another direction can obscure the one for which God's voice speaks in all of us.
Never accord the ego the power to interfere with the journey.
It has none,
Because the journey is the way to what is true.
Leave all illusions behind and reach beyond all attempts of the ego to hold you back.
I go before you because I am beyond the ego.
Reach therefore for My hand because you want to transcend the ego.
My strength will never be wanting and if you choose to share it,
You will do so.
I give it willingly and gladly because I need you as much as you need Me.
