April 09, 2018

Day 121 - A Course in Miracles

Day 121 - A Course in Miracles



Chapter Eleven: God's Plan For Salvation
II. The Judgment of the Holy Spirit


3 There is but one interpretation of all motivation that makes any sense. And because it is the Holy Spirit's judgment, it requires no effort at all on your part. Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help. That is what it is, regardless of the form it takes. Can anyone be justified in responding with anger to a plea for help? No response can be appropriate except the willingness to give it to him, for this and only this is what he is asking for. Offer him anything else, and you are assuming the right to attack his reality by interpreting it as you see fit.

4 Perhaps the danger of this to your own mind is not yet fully apparent to you, but this by no means signifies that it is not perfectly clear. If you maintain that an appeal for help is something else, you will react to something else, and your response will be inappropriate to reality as it is but not to your perception of it. This is poor reality testing by definition. There is nothing to prevent you from recognizing all calls for help as exactly what they are except your own perceived need to attack. It is only this that makes you willing to engage in endless "battles" with reality in which you deny the reality of the need for healing by making it unreal. You would not do this except for yourunwillingness to perceive reality, which you withhold from yourself.

5 It is surely good advice to tell you not to judge what you do not understand. No one with a personal investment is a reliable witness, for truth to him has become what he wants it to be. If you are unwilling to perceive an appeal for help as what it is, it is because you are unwilling to give help and to receive it. The analysis of the ego's "real" motivation is the modern equivalent of the inquisition, for in both a brother's errors are "uncovered" and he is then attacked for his own good. What can this be but projection? For his errors lay in the minds of his interpreters, for which they punished him.

6 Whenever you fail to recognize a call for help, you are refusing help. Would you maintain that you do not needit? Yet this is what you are maintaining when you refuse to recognize a brother's appeal, for only by answering his appeal can you be helped. Deny him your help, and you will not perceive God's answer to you. The Holy Spirit does not need your help in interpreting motivation, but you do need His. Only appreciation is an appropriate response to your brother. Gratitude is due him for both his loving thoughts and his appeals for help, for both are capable of bringing love into your awareness if you perceive them truly. And all your sense of strain comes from your attempts not to do just this.

7 How simple, then, is God's plan for salvation. There is but one response to reality, for reality evokes no conflict at all. There is but one Teacher of reality, Who understands what it is. He does not change His Mind about reality because reality does not change. Although your interpretations of reality are meaningless in your divided state, His remain consistently true. He gives them to you because they are for you. Do not attempt to "help" a brother in yourway, for you cannot help yourselves. But hear his call for the help of God, and you will recognize your own need for the Father.

8 Your interpretations of your brother's need is your interpretation of yours. By giving help you are asking for it, and if you perceive but one need in yourself, you will be healed. For you will recognize God's answer as you want it to be, and if you want it in truth, it will be truly yours. Every appeal you answer in the name of Christ brings the remembrance of your Father closer to your awareness. For the sake of your need, then, hear every call for help as what it is, so God can answer you.

9 By applying the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the reactions of others more and more consistently, you will gain an increasing awareness that His criteria are equally applicable to you. For to recognize fear is not enough to escape from it, although the recognition is necessary to demonstrate the need for escape. The Holy Spirit must still translate it into truth. If you were left with the fear, having recognized it, you would have taken a step away from reality, not towards it. Yet we have repeatedly emphasized the need to recognize fear and face it without disguise as a crucial step in the undoing of the ego. Consider how well the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the motives of others will serve you then.

10 Having taught you to accept only loving thoughts in others and to regard everything else as an appeal for help, He has taught you that fear is an appeal for help. This is what recognizing it really means. If you do not protect it, He will reinterpret it. That is the ultimate value to you in learning to perceive attack as a call for love. We have learned surely that fear and attack are inevitably associated. If only attack produces fear and if you see attack as the call for help that it is, the unreality of fear must dawn upon you. For fear is a call for love in unconscious recognition of what has been denied.



Workbook - L e s s o n 121

Forgiveness is the key to happiness.

1 Here is the answer to your search for peace. Here is the key to meaning in a world which seems to make no sense. Here is the way to safety in apparent dangers which appear to threaten you at every turn and bring uncertainty to all your hopes of ever finding quietness and peace. Here are all questions answered; here the end of all uncertainty ensured at last.

2 The unforgiving mind is full of fear and offers love no room to be itself, no place where it can spread its wings in peace and soar above the turmoil of the world. The unforgiving mind is sad, without the hope of respite and release from pain. It suffers and abides in misery, peering about in darkness, seeing not, yet certain of the danger lurking there.

3 The unforgiving mind is torn with doubt, confused about itself and all it sees, afraid and angry, weak and blustering, afraid to go ahead, afraid to stay, afraid to waken or to go to sleep, afraid of every sound, yet more afraid of stillness; terrified of darkness, yet more terrified at the approach of light.

4 What can the unforgiving mind perceive but its damnation? What can it behold except the proof that all its sins are real? The unforgiving mind sees no mistakes, but only sins. It looks upon the world with sightless eyes and shrieks as it beholds its own projections rising to attack its miserable parody of life. It wants to live, yet wishes it were dead. It wants forgiveness, yet it sees no hope. It wants escape, yet can conceive of none because it sees the sinful everywhere.

5 The unforgiving mind is in despair, without the prospect of a future which can offer anything but more despair. Yet it regards its judgment of the world as irreversible and does not see it has condemned itself to this despair. It thinks it cannot change, for what it sees bears witness that its judgment is correct. It does not ask because it thinks it knows. It does not question, certain it is right.

6 Forgiveness is acquired. It is not inherent in a mind, which cannot sin. As sin was an idea you taught yourself, forgiveness must be learned by you as well, but from a Teacher other than yourself, who represents the other Self in you. Through Him you learn how to forgive the self you think you made and let it disappear. Thus you return your mind as one to Him Who is your Self and Who can never sin.

7 Each unforgiving mind presents you with an opportunity to teach your own how to forgive itself. Each one awaits release from hell through you and turns to you imploringly for Heaven here and now. It has no hope, but you become its hope. And as its hope, do you become your own. The unforgiving mind must learn through your forgiveness that it has been saved from hell. And as you teach salvation, you will learn.

8 Yet all your teaching and your learning will be not of you, but of the Teacher Who was given you to show the way to you. Today we practice learning to forgive. If you are willing, you can learn today to take the key to happiness and use it on your own behalf. We will devote ten minutes in the morning and at night another ten, to learning how to give forgiveness and receive forgiveness too.

9 The unforgiving mind does not believe that giving and receiving are the same. Yet we will try to learn today that they are one through practicing forgiving toward one whom you think of as an enemy and one whom you consider as a friend. And as you learn to see them both as one, we will extend the lesson to ourselves and see that their escape included ours.

10 Begin the longer practice periods by thinking of someone you do not like, who seems to irritate you or to cause regret in you if you should meet him; one you actively despise or merely try to overlook. It does not matter what the form your anger takes. You probably have chosen him already. He will do.

11 Now close your eyes and see him in your mind and look at him a while. Try to perceive some light in him somewhere-a little gleam which you had never noticed. Try to find some little spark of brightness shining through the ugly picture which you hold of him. Look at this picture till you see a light somewhere within it, and then try to let this light extend until it covers him and makes the picture beautiful and good.

12 Look at this changed perception for a while, and turn your mind to one you call a friend. Try to transfer the light you learned to see around your former "enemy" to him. Perceive him now as more than friend to you, for in that light his holiness shows you your savior, saved and saving, healed and whole. Then let him offer you the light you see in him and let your "enemy" and friend unite in blessing you with what you gave. Now are you one with them and they with you. Now have you been forgiven by yourself.

13 Do not forget throughout the day the role forgiveness plays in bringing happiness to every unforgiving mind, with yours among them. Every hour tell yourself:

14 Forgiveness is the key to happiness.
 I will awaken from the dream that I
 Am mortal, fallible, and full of sin,
 And know I am the perfect Son of God.


365 Days Through A Course in Miracles
            A Daily Miracle Lesson


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* simple TABLE of CONTENTS! ...  with published posts until this moment.

START DAY: You can begin any time with the Teachings! Read, meditate and make the daily exercises, one by one, every day ... for 365 days! Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, ... until the completion of the 365 lessons!
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