ACIM Chap 7 - Consistency of the Kingdom

A Course in Miracles

Chapter 7 - Consistency of the Kingdom

Bargaining versus Healing

The creative power of both God and His creations is limitless, but they are not in reciprocal relationship. You do communicate fully with God, as He does with you. This is an ongoing process in which you share, and because you share it, you are inspired to create like God. Yet in creation you are not in reciprocal relation to God since He created you, but you did not create Him. We have already said that only in this respect your creative power differs from His. Even in this world there is a parallel. Parents give birth to children, but children do not give birth to parents. They do, however, give birth to their children and thus give birth as their parents do.

If you created God and He created you, the Kingdom could not increase through its own creative thought. Creation would therefore be limited, and you would not be co-creators with God. As God's creative Thought proceeds from Him to you, so must your creative thought proceed from you to your creations. Only in this way can all creative power extend outward. God's accomplishments are not yours. But yours are like His. He created the Sonship, and you increase it. You have the power to add to the Kingdom, but not to add to the Creator of the Kingdom. You claim this power when you become vigilant only for God and His Kingdom. By accepting this power as yours, you have learned to be what you are.

Your creations belong in you, as you belong in God. You are part of God, as your sons are part of His Sons. To create is to love. Love extends outward simply because it cannot be contained. Being limitless, it does not stop. It creates forever, but not in time. God's creations have always been because He has always been. Your creations have always been because you can create only as God creates. Eternity is yours because He created you eternal.

The ego demands reciprocal rights because it is competitive rather than loving. It is always willing to make a "deal," but it cannot understand that to be like another means that no deals are possible. To gain you must give, not bargain. To bargain is to limit giving, and this is not God's Will. To will with God is to create like Him. God does not limit His gifts in any way. You are His gifts, and so your gifts must be like His. Your gifts to the Kingdom must be like His gifts to you.

I gave only love to the Kingdom because I believed that was what I was. What you believe you are determines your gifts, and if God created you by extending Himself as you, you can only extend yourself as He did. Only joy increases forever, since joy and eternity are inseparable. God extends outward beyond limits and beyond time, and you who are co-creators with Him extend His Kingdom forever and beyond limit. Eternity is the indelible stamp of creation.

The eternal are in peace and joy forever.

To think like God is to share His certainty of what you are. And to create like Him is to share the perfect Love He shares with you. To this the Holy Spirit leads you that your joy may be complete because the Kingdom of God is whole.

We have said that the last step in the reawakening of knowledge is taken by God. This is true, but it is hard to explain in words because words are symbols, and nothing that is true needs to be explained. However, the Holy Spirit has the task of translating the useless into the useful, the meaningless into the meaningful, and the temporary into the timeless. He can therefore tell you something about this last step, although this one you must know yourself, since by it you know what you are. This is your being.

God does not take steps because His accomplishments are not gradual. He does not teach because His creations are changeless. He does nothing last because He created first and for always. It must be understood that the word "first" as applied to Him is not a time concept. He is first in the sense that He is the first in the Holy Trinity itself. He is the Prime Creator because He created His co-creators. Because He did, time applies neither to Him nor to what He created. The "last step" that God will take was therefore true in the beginning, is true now, and will be true forever.

What is timeless is always there because its being is eternally changeless. It does not change by increase because it was forever created to increase. If you perceive it as not increasing, you do not know what it is. You also do not know what created it or Who He is. God does not reveal this to you because it was never hidden. His light was never obscured because it is His Will to share it. How can what is fully shared be withheld and then revealed?

To heal is the only kind of thinking in this world that resembles the Thought of God, and because of the elements which they share, can transfer to it.

When a brother perceives himself as sick, he is perceiving himself as not whole and therefore in need. If you too see him this way, you are seeing him as if he were absent from the Kingdom or separated from it, thus making the Kingdom itself obscure to both of you. Sickness and separation are not of God, but the Kingdom is. If you obscure the Kingdom, you are perceiving what is not of God.

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A Course in Miracles

Chapter 7 - Consistency of the Kingdom

Laws of Mind

To heal, then, is to correct perception in your brother and yourself by sharing the Holy Spirit with him. This places you both within the Kingdom and restores its wholeness in your minds. This parallels creation because it unifies by increasing and integrates by extending.

What you project you believe. This is an immutable law of the mind in this world as well as in the Kingdom.

However, the content is different in this world because the thoughts it governs are very different from the thoughts in the Kingdom. Laws must be adapted to circumstances if they are to maintain order.

The outstanding characteristic of the laws of mind as they operate in this world is that by obeying them—and I assure you that you must obey them—you can arrive at diametrically opposed results. This is because the laws have adapted to the circumstances of this world, in which diametrically opposed outcomes are believed in.

The laws of mind govern thoughts, and you do respond to two conflicting voices. You have heard many arguments on behalf of "the freedoms," which would indeed have been freedom if man had not chosen to fight for them. That is why they perceive "the freedoms" as many instead of as one. Yet the argument that underlies the defense of freedom is perfectly valid. Because it is true, it should not be fought for, but it should be sided with.

Those who are against freedom believe that its outcome will hurt them, which cannot be true. But those who are for freedom, even if they are misguided in how to defend it, are siding with the one thing in this world which is true.

Whenever anyone can listen fairly to both sides of any issue, he will make the right decision.

This is because he has the answer. Conflict can seem to be interpersonal, but it must be intrapersonal first.

The term "intrapersonal" is an ego term because "personal" implies "of one person" and not of others. "Interpersonal" has similar error in that it refers to something that exists among different or separate people. When we spoke before of the extremely personal nature of revelation, we followed this statement immediately with a description of the inevitable outcomes of the revelation in terms of sharing.

A person conceives of himself as separate largely because he perceives of himself as bounded by a body. Only if he perceives himself as a mind can this be overcome.

Then he is free to use terms like "intramental" and "intermental" without seeing them as different or conflicting, because minds can be in perfect accord.

Outside the Kingdom, the law which prevails inside it is adapted to "what you project you believe." This is its teaching form, since outside the Kingdom teaching is mandatory because learning is essential. This form of the law clearly implies that you will learn what you are from what you have projected onto others and therefore believe they are. In the Kingdom there is no teaching or learning because there is no belief. There is only certainty. God and His Sons, in the surety of being, know that what you project you are. That form of the law is not adapted at all, being the law of creation. God Himself created the law by creating by it. And His Sons, who create like Him, follow it gladly, knowing that the increase of the Kingdom depends on it just as their own creation did.

Laws must be communicated if they are to be helpful. In effect, they must be translated for those who speak a different language. Nevertheless, a good translator, although he must alter the form of what he translates, never changes the meaning. In fact, his whole purpose is to change the form so that the original meaning is retained. The Holy Spirit is the translator of the Laws of God to those who do not understand them. You could not do this yourselves because conflicted minds cannot be faithful to one meaning and will therefore change the meaning to preserve the form.

The Holy Spirit's purpose in translating is naturally exactly the opposite. He translates only to preserve the original meaning in all respects and in all languages. Therefore, He opposes differences in form as meaningful, emphasizing always that these differences do not matter. The meaning of His message is always the same, and only the meaning matters. God's Law of Creation in perfect form does not involve the use of truth to convince His Sons of truth. The extension of truth, which is the Law of the Kingdom, rests only on the knowledge of what truth is. This is your inheritance and requires no learning at all, but when you disinherited yourselves, you became learners.

No one questions the intimate connection of learning and memory. Learning is impossible without memory, since it cannot be consistent unless it is remembered. That is why the Holy Spirit is a lesson in remembering. We said before that He teaches remembering and forgetting, but the forgetting aspect is only to make the remembering consistent. You forget in order to remember better.

You will not understand His translations while you listen to two ways of perceiving them. Therefore, you must forget or relinquish one to understand the other. This is the only way you can learn consistency so that you can finally be consistent.

What can the perfect consistency of the Kingdom mean to the confused? It is apparent that confusion interferes with meaning and therefore prevents the learner from appreciating it. There is no confusion in the Kingdom because there is only one meaning. This meaning comes from God and is God. Because it is also you, you share it and extend it as your Creator did. This needs no translation because it is perfectly understood, but it does need extension because it means extension. Communication is perfectly direct and perfectly united. It is totally without strain because nothing discordant ever enters. That is why it is the Kingdom of God. It belongs to Him and is therefore like Him. That is its reality, and nothing can assail it.