A Course In Miracles - Chapter 9, 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 9,
The Acceptance of the Atonement.
Section 4,
The Holy Spirit's Plan of Forgiveness.
To summarize my takeaways,
In Section 4 of Chapter 9,
We learn that to forgive is to overlook.
We are instructed to look beyond error and not let our perception rest upon it,
Since we will believe what our perception holds.
We further learn that the atonement is a lesson in sharing because we have forgotten how to do it.
And the Holy Spirit merely reminds us of the natural use of our abilities by reinterpreting our ability to attack into our ability to share.
We are reminded that the forgiveness learned from the Holy Spirit does not use fear to undo fear.
Instead,
We are taught to look beyond error from the beginning,
Keeping it unreal for us.
We are reminded again that miracles are natural and are merely the sign of our willingness to follow the Holy Spirit's plan of salvation.
Back in Section 8 of Chapter 2,
We were introduced to the term Last Judgment,
And we are told here not to fear the Last Judgment,
For it is actually our part of the atonement,
And will be carried out by us with the Holy Spirit's help.
It is a final healing rather than a meting out of punishment.
The second coming,
Then,
Is the return of sense.
It is the awareness of reality,
Not its return.
Can this possibly be fearful?
We can rejoice,
For reality is here.
It belongs to all of us.
And only this awareness heals,
Because it is the awareness of truth.
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.
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.
Atonement,
The Holy Spirit's plan of correction,
Healing our minds from the earthly world of illusion to God's world of truth.
Fantasy,
A distorted form of vision,
An attempt to control reality according to false needs.
Reality,
Pure spirit,
Which is changeless,
Eternal,
Formless,
And boundless.
Yet we can lose our awareness of reality when we try to be the author of reality,
Including our own reality.
Ego,
Our belief in the separated or false self that we made as a substitute for the self that God created.
Salvation,
We are saved from our belief in sin and guilt through the change of mind that forgiveness and the miracle bring about.
Miracle,
The change in mind that shifts our perception,
Transcending the laws of this world to reflect the laws of God.
The miracle provides the means to heal our own minds and the minds of others.
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,
Onto the reading.
A Course in Miracles Chapter 9,
The Acceptance of the Atonement.
Section 4,
The Holy Spirit's Plan of Forgiveness.
Atonement is for all because it is the way to undo the belief that anything is for you alone.
To forgive is to overlook.
Work then beyond error and do not let your perception rest upon it,
For you will believe what your perception holds.
Accept as true only what your brother is,
If you would know yourself.
Perceive what he is not and you cannot know what you are because you see him falsely.
Remember always that your identity is shared and that its sharing is its reality.
You have a part to play in the atonement,
But the plan of the atonement is beyond you.
You do not understand how to overlook errors or you would not make them.
It would merely be further error to believe either that you do not make them or that you can correct them without a guide to correction.
If you do not follow this guide,
Your errors will not be corrected.
The plan is not yours because of your limited ideas about what you are.
This sense of limitation is where all errors arise.
The way to undo them,
Therefore,
Is not of you,
But for you.
The atonement is a lesson in sharing,
Which is given you because you have forgotten how to do it.
The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of the natural use of your abilities.
By reinterpreting the ability to attack into the ability to share,
He translates what you have made into what God created.
If you would accomplish this through him,
You cannot look on your abilities through the eyes of the ego or you will judge them as it does.
And their harmfulness lies in the ego's judgment.
All their helpfulness lies in the judgment of the Holy Spirit.
The ego,
Too,
Has a plan of forgiveness because you are asking for one,
Though not of the right teacher.
The ego's plan,
Of course,
Makes no sense and will not work.
By following its plan,
You will merely place yourself in an impossible situation,
To which the ego always leads you.
The ego's plan is to have you seek error clearly first and then overlook it.
Yet how can you overlook what you have made real?
By seeing it clearly,
You have made it real and cannot overlook it.
This is where the ego is forced to appeal to mysteries,
Insisting that you must accept the meaningless to save yourself.
Many have tried to do this in my name,
Forgetting that my words make perfect sense because they come from God.
They are as sensible now as they ever were because they speak of ideas that are eternal.
Forgiveness that is learned of me does not use fear to undo fear,
Nor does it make real the unreal and then destroy it.
This through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning and thus keeping it unreal for you.
Do not let any belief in its realness enter your mind,
Or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven.
What has no effect does not exist,
And to the Holy Spirit,
The effects of error are nonexistent.
By steadily and consistently canceling out all its effects everywhere and in all respects,
He teaches that the ego does not exist and proves it.
Follow the Holy Spirit's teaching in forgiveness then,
Because forgiveness is His function and He knows how to fulfill it perfectly.
That is what I meant when I said that miracles are natural and when they do not occur,
Something has gone wrong.
Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow the Holy Spirit's plan of salvation,
Recognizing that you do not understand what it is.
His work is not your function,
And unless you accept this,
You cannot learn what your function is.
The confusion of functions is so typical of the ego that you should be quite familiar with it by now.
The ego believes that all functions belong to it,
Even though it has no idea what they are.
This is more than mere confusion.
It is a particularly dangerous combination of grandiosity and confusion that makes the ego likely to attack anyone and anything for no reason at all.
This is exactly what the ego does.
It is unpredictable in its responses because it has no idea of what it perceives.
If you have no idea what is happening,
How appropriately can you expect to react?
You might ask yourself,
Regardless of how you may account for the reaction,
Whether its unpredictability places the ego in a sound position as your guide.
Let me repeat that the ego's qualifications as a guide are singularly unfortunate,
And that it is a remarkably poor choice as a teacher of salvation.
Anyone who elects a totally insane guide must be totally insane himself.
Nor is it true that you do not realize the guide is insane.
You realize it because I realize it,
And you have judged it by the same standard I have.
The ego literally lives on borrowed time and its days are numbered.
Do not fear the last judgment,
But welcome it and do not wait,
For the ego's time is borrowed from your eternity.
This is the second coming that was made for you as the first was created.
The second coming is merely the return of sense.
Can this possibly be fearful?
What can be fearful but fantasy?
And who turns to fantasy unless he despairs of finding satisfaction in reality?
But it is certain that you will never find satisfaction in fantasy,
So that your only hope is to change your mind about reality.
Only if the decision that reality is fearful is wrong,
Can God be right,
And I assure you that God is right.
Be glad then that you have been wrong,
But this was only because you did not know who you were.
Had you known,
You could no more have been wrong than God can.
The impossible can happen only in fantasy.
When you search for reality in fantasies,
You will not find it.
The symbols of fantasy are of the ego,
And of these you will find many,
But do not look for meaning in them.
They have no more meaning than the fantasies to which they were woven.
Fairy tales can be pleasant or fearful,
But no one calls them true.
Children may believe them,
And so for a while the tales are true for them.
Yet when reality dawns,
The fantasies are gone.
Reality has not gone in the meanwhile.
The second coming is the awareness of reality,
Not its return.
Behold my child,
Reality is here.
It belongs to you and me and God,
And is perfectly satisfying to all of us.
Only this awareness heals,
Because it is the awareness of truth.
