Know Thyself Your past learning must have taught you the wrong things, simply because it has not made you happy. On this basis alone, its value should be questioned.
The curriculum of the Atonement is the opposite of the curriculum you have established for yourself, but so is its outcome. If the outcome of yours has made you unhappy, and if you want a different one, a change in the curriculum is obviously necessary.
A meaningful curriculum cannot be inconsistent.
This leads to fluctuation, but not to change. The volatile have no direction. They cannot choose one, because they cannot relinquish the other, even if the other does not exist. Their conflicted curriculum teaches them all directions exist, and gives them no rationale for choice. The total senselessness of such a curriculum must be fully recognized before a real change in direction becomes possible.
Only One Teachers Knows What You Are You cannot learn simultaneously from two teachers who are in total disagreement about everything. Their joint curriculum presents an impossible learning task. They are teaching you entirely different things in entirely different ways—which might be possible, except for the crucial fact that both are teaching you about yourself. Your reality is unaffected by both, but if you listen to both, your mind will be split about what your reality is. There is a rationale for choice.
The ego does not know what it is trying to teach.
Even if you could disregard the Holy Spirit entirely, which is quite impossible, you could learn nothing from the ego, because the ego knows nothing.
The ego has never given you a sensible answer to anything.
But the ego has done more harm to your learning than this alone. The Ego is The Denial of Free Will Learning is joyful, if it leads you along your natural path, and facilitates the development of what you have.
Your will is in your nature, and therefore cannot go against it. The ego cannot teach you anything, as long as your will is free, because you will not LISTEN to it. It is not your will to be imprisoned, because your will is free.
It
is never God Who coerces you, because He shares His Will with
you. His Voice teaches only His Will, but that is not the Holy
Spirit's lesson, because that is what you ARE.
It is not, then, only the direction of the curriculum which must be unconflicted, but also the content.
This unnatural lesson cannot be learned, but the attempt to learn it is a violation of your own freedom, and makes you afraid of your (real) will because it is free. The Holy Spirit opposes any imprisoning of the will of a Son of God, knowing that the will of the Son IS the Father's. He leads you steadily along the PATH OF FREEDOM, teaching you how to disregard, or look beyond, everything that would hold you back.
You cannot make this distinction without Him. That is because you have taught yourself that imprisonment IS freedom.
The Holy Spirit's teaching takes only ONE direction and has only ONE goal. His direction is freedom and His goal is God. Yet he cannot conceive of God without you, because it was not God's Will to be without you. When you have learned that your will IS God's, you could no more will to be without Him than He could will to be without you.
When we said, "All power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His," this is what we meant:
You are the Will of God because this is how you were created. Because your Creator creates only like Himself, you are "like Him." You are PART of Him Who IS all power and glory, and are therefore as unlimited as He is.
His appeal, then, is merely to what the Kingdom IS, and for its own acknowledgment of what it is.
Awakening
runs easily and gladly through the Kingdom, in answer to the Call
of God. This
is the natural response of every Son of God to the Voice of his
Creator, because it is the Voice for HIS creations and for HIS
own extension. Peace is the Condition of Knowledge You are hampered in your progress by your demands to know what you do not know. This is actually a way of holding on to deprivation. You cannot reasonably object to following instructions in a course for knowing on the grounds that you do not (yet) know. The need for the course is implicit in your objection.
This is only because those who are in conflict are not peaceful, and peace is the condition of knowledge, because it is the condition of the Kingdom (our real Identity).
This is not a bargain made by God, Who makes no bargains. It is merely the result of your misuse of His laws on behalf of a will that is not His.
I have told you what knowledge offers you, but it is clear that you do not regard this as wholly desirable. If you did, you would hardly be willing to throw it away so readily, when the ego asks for your allegiance.
The distraction of the ego seems to interfere with your learning, but the ego has no power to distract you, unless you give it the power.
Hallucinations are inaccurate perceptions of reality. But you are not asked to dispel them alone. You are merely asked to evaluate them in terms of their results to you. If you do not want them (your inaccurate perceptions) on the basis of LOSS OF PEACE, they will be removed from your mind for you. Prodigal Son
Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer. The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it.
I am come to tell you that the choice of which is true is not yours. If it were, you would have destroyed yourselves. Yet God did not will the destruction of His creations, having created them for eternity. His Will has saved you, not from yourselves, but from your illusions of yourselves. He has saved you FOR yourselves.
Let
us glorify Him Whom the world denies, for over
That is not because he is deprived of anything else, but because nothing else is WORTHY of him. What God and His Sons create IS eternal, and in this, and this only, is their joy. Listen to the story of the prodigal son, and learn what God’s treasure is and YOURS:
Can the creations of God Himself take joy How, then, can you accept anything else or give anything else, and expect joy in return? And what else but joy would you want?
Yet you could not make yourself unworthy, because you are the treasure of God. What HE values IS valuable. There can be no question of its worth, because its value lies in God’s sharing Himself with it, and esablishing its value forever. |
(Chapter 8 - The Journey Back, Direction of the Curriculum, Rationale for Choice, Holy Encounter & Power of Joint Decision)
A Course in Miracles is a self-study curriculum that guides students toward a spiritual way of life by restoring their contact with what it calls the Holy Spirit.
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Everyone Is Looking For Himself When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him, you will see yourself. As you treat him, you will treat yourself. As you think of him, you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose sight of yourself. Whenever two Sons of God meet, they are given another chance at salvation (learning what they really are). Do not leave anyone without giving salvation to him and receiving it yourself. For I am always there with you, in remembrance of (the real) you. The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself, and for the power and glory he thinks he has lost. Whenever you are with anyone else, you have another opportunity to find them. Your power and glory are in him, because they are yours. The ego tries to find them in yourself because it does not know where to look. But the Holy Spirit teaches you that, if you look ONLY at yourself, you cannot find yourself because that is not what you (really) are. Whenever you are with a brother, you are LEARNING what you are because you are TEACHING what you are. He will respond either with pain or with joy, depending on which teacher you are following. He will be imprisoned or released according to your decision, and so will you. Never forget your responsibility to him because it is your responsibility to yourself. Give him his place in the Kingdom, and you will have yours. The Kingdom (God's thought system of our real Identity) cannot be found ALONE, and you who are the Kingdom cannot find yourselves alone. To achieve the goal of the curriculum, then, you cannot listen to the ego. Its purpose is to defeat its own goal. The ego does not know this because it does not know anything. But you can know this—and you will know it—if you are willing to look at what the ego has made of you. This is your responsibility because, once you have really done this, you will accept the Atonement (identity correction) for yourself. What other choice could you make? Having made this choice, you will begin to learn and understand why you have believed that, when you met someone else, you had thought that he was someone else. And every holy encounter, in which you enter fully, will teach you that THIS IS NOT SO—You can encounter only part of yourself, because you are part of God, Who is everything. His power and glory are everywhere, and you cannot be excluded from them. The ego teaches that your strength is in you ALONE. The Holy Spirit teaches that ALL strength is in God and therefore in you. God wills no one suffer. He does not will anyone to suffer for a wrong decision (about what they are), including you. That is why He has given you the means for undoing it. Through His power and glory all your wrong decisions are undone completely, releasing you and your brothers from every imprisoning thought any part of the Sonship has accepted. Wrong decisions have no power because they are not true. The imprisonment which they SEEM to produce is no more true than they are. Power and glory belong to God alone. So do YOU! God gives whatever belongs to Him because He gives Himself, and everything belongs to Him. Giving of yourself is the function He gave you. Fulfilling it perfectly will teach you what you have of Him, and this will teach you what you are in Him. There is no question but one you should ever ask of yourself– “Do I want to know my Father’s Will for me?” He will not hide it. He has revealed it to me because I asked it of Him, and learned of what He had already given. Our function is to function together because, apart from each other, we cannot function at all. The whole power of God’s Son lies in all of us, but not in any of us alone. God would not have us be alone, because He does not will to be alone. That is why He created His Son, and gave him the power to create with Him. Our creations are as holy as we are, and we are the Sons of God Himself, and therefore as holy as He is. Through our creations we extend our love, and thus increase the joy of the Holy Trinity. You do not understand this for a very simple reason. You who are God’s own treasure do not regard yourselves as valuable. Given this belief, you cannot understand ANYTHING. I share with God the knowledge of the value HE puts upon you. My devotion to you is of Him, being born of my knowledge of myself and Him. We cannot be separated. Whom God has joined cannot be separated, and God has joined all His Sons with Himself. Can you be separated from your life and your being? The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge of where you are always, and what you are forever. It is a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed. Truth can only be experienced. It
cannot be described, I can make you aware of the conditions of truth, but the experience is of God. Together
we can What God has willed for you IS yours. He has given His Will to His treasure, whose treasure It is. "Your
heart lies where You who are beloved of God are wholly blessed.
Learn this of me, and free the holy will of all |
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