ARCIM

Daily Lesson 93 ~
April 3

Light and Joy and Peace abide in me.

The deep unconscious fear of many is that they are the home of darkness, unforgivable flaw (sin), and evil. They despair that if anyone could see the truth about them they would be repelled, recoiling as if from a poisonous snake. They secretly believe that if what they fear is true about themselves were revealed directly to them, they would be struck with horror so intense that they would rush to death by their own hand, living on after having this confirmed being impossible.

These are fears, despairs and beliefs so firmly fixed in the hidden part of the mind – specifically, the collective unconscious – that it may seem difficult for you to be helped to understand that they are based on nothing. That each person makes mistakes is obvious, some of them hurtful. That each has sought in strange ways salvation from what they believe to be their sins; has been deceived, deceiving and afraid of foolish fantasies and savage dreams; and has bowed down to idols made of dust: all this is true of yourself and others according to what you now believe.

Today we question this, not from the point of view of what you think, believe and fear, but from a very different Reference Point, from which all idle thoughts are meaningless. Such thoughts are not in accordance with the Divine’s Will. The Divine does not share with you your strange fears and beliefs. This is enough to prove that they are wrong, but you do not yet understand that this is so.

You will be overjoyed once you are convinced of the assurance that all the hurt that you think you did was never done, that all your mistakes are nothing, that you are as pure and holy as you were created, and that Light and Joy and Peace abide in you. Your distorted image of yourself cannot withstand the Will of the Divine. You believe that the Divine’s Will and Judgment mean your death, but they mean Life. You fear that their Presence means you are destroyed, but you discover that It means you are awakened.

The self you made, which this Course has called the ego, is not the Child of the Divine. Therefore this self does not exist at all in Reality. And anything it seems to do and think means nothing. It is neither bad nor good. It is unreal, and nothing more than that. Your true Self does not do battle with your ego. And your ego cannot hurt your true Self, or attack Its Peace. The ego has not changed creation, or reduced eternal Innocence to guilt, or Love to hate. What power can this self you made possess, when it would contradict the Will of the Divine?

Your Innocence is guaranteed by the Divine. Because this is true it must be repeated over and over until it is accepted. Your Innocence is guaranteed by the Divine. Nothing can touch or change what the Divine created as eternal. The self you made, however it may be perceived by you or others, is meaningless. Your Innocence is guaranteed by the Divine, and Light and Joy and Peace abide in you eternally.

Awakening requires the acceptance of only one Thought: you are as the Divine created you, not what you have made of yourself. Whatever hurt you may think you have caused or suffered, you are as the Divine created you. Whatever mistakes you have made, the Truth about you is unchanged. Creation is eternal and unalterable. Your Innocence is guaranteed by the Divine. You are and will forever be exactly as you were created. Light and Joy and Peace abide in you because the Divine put them there.

In our longer exercise periods today, which would be most profitable if done for the first five minutes of every waking hour, we will begin by stating the Truth about your holy Self, and your creation by the Divine:

“Light and Joy and Peace abide in me. My Innocence is guaranteed by the Divine.”

Then put away all foolish self-images, and spend the rest of the practice period in trying to experience what the Divine has given you, in place of what you have decreed for yourself.

You are either what the Divine created or what you made. One Self is true; the other self is not there. Try to experience the Unity of your one Self. Try to appreciate Its Holiness and the Love from which It was created. Try not to interfere with the holy Self that the Divine created as you by hiding Its Majesty behind the tiny idols of meaninglessness and hurt and fear you have made to replace It. Let It come into Its Own. Your real Self is here, and It is you. And Light and Joy and Peace abide in you because this is so.

You may not be willing or even able to use the first five minutes of each hour for these exercises. Try, however, to do so when you can. If you cannot spend five minutes experiencing the Presence of your real Self, at least remember to repeat these Thoughts each hour:

“Light and Joy and Peace abide in me. My Innocence is guaranteed by the Divine.”

Then try to devote at least a minute or so to closing your eyes and realizing that this is a statement of the Truth about you.

If a situation arises that seems to be disturbing, quickly dispel the illusion of fear by repeating these Thoughts again. Should you be tempted to become angry with someone, tell them silently:

“Light and Joy and Peace abide in you. Your Innocence is guaranteed by the Divine.”

You can do much for the world’s awakening today. You can do much today to bring yourself closer to accepting the part in Atonement that Spirit has assigned to you. And you can do much today to bring the conviction to your mind that the idea for the day is true indeed.

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 6: Spirit’s Lessons of Undoing

 

3. The One Answer to All Questions

Remember that the Holy Spirit is the Answer, not the question. Of the two voices available to you, the ego always speaks first in advising you in any situation, because it is capricious and does not mean its maker well. Because it doesn’t have any real answers, it can only ask questions. It is capricious because it believes, and correctly, that its maker may withdraw their support from it at any moment. If the ego meant you well, it would be glad of that moment you no longer had use for it, as the Holy Spirit will be glad when It has brought you Home and you no longer need Its Guidance. The ego does not regard itself as part of you. Herein lies its primary perceptual error, and at the same time the foundation of its entire thought system.

When the Divine created you, It made you Part of It. That is why attack within the Realm of Heaven is impossible. But the separated ones made the ego as a frame of mind without Love, and so it does not love you. You could not remain within the Realm of Heaven without Love, and since the Realm is Love, you believe you are outside It. This enables the ego to regard itself as separate and outside its maker, thus speaking for the part of your mind that believes you are separate and outside the Mind of the Divine.

The ego, then, raised the first question that was ever asked, but which it can never answer. That question, which was, “What are you?,” was the beginning of doubt. The ego has never answered any questions since, though it has raised a great many. The most inventive activities of the ego have never done anything more than obscure the actual question, and distract you from asking it, because you have the Answer, and the ego is afraid because of that. You cannot really understand or resolve conflict until you fully understand one basic fact that the ego does not understand, which is that although the Holy Spirit does not speak first, It always answers, and answers truly. Everyone has called upon It for help at one time or another, in one way or another, and has been answered, though they may not have understood the Source of the answer. Since the Holy Spirit answers truly, It answers for all time, and that means that everyone has the Answer now.

The ego cannot hear or in any way comprehend the Holy Spirit, but it does feel that part of the same mind that made it is wholly aligned with something else. It interprets this entirely as a justification for attacking its maker. The ego believes that the best defense is attack, and wants you to believe this. Unless you do believe it, you will not side with the ego. And the ego feels badly in need of allies, though not of sisters and brothers.

Perceiving something alien to itself in your mind, the ego turns to the body rather than the mind as its ally because the body is not eternal, and therefore not truly part of you. This makes the body the ego’s friend in its perception. But it is an alliance frankly based on separation. If you side with this alliance, you will be afraid because you will be siding with an alliance of fear. The ego and the body, when they are allied, “conspire” against your mind. Because the ego realizes that its perceived “enemy,” the spirit, can dissolve both it and the body merely by knowing that they are not truly part of you, the ego invites the body to join in its attack, though of course this attack has no reality and no meaning.

This is perhaps the strangest perception of all, if you consider what it really involves. The ego, which is not real, attempts to persuade the mind, which is real, that the ego is the mind’s own learning device, and that the learning device is more real than the mind is. No one in their right mind could possibly believe this, and no one in their right mind does. To believe it means that a person is not in their right mind.

Hear, then, the one Answer of the Holy Spirit to all the questions that the ego raises:

 

You are a Child of the Divine, an essential Part of Its Realm, and you were created as Part of It. Nothing outside of the Divine and Its perfect Creation exists, and only These are real. You have chosen a sleep in which you have had bad dreams, but the sleep is not real, and the Divine through Its Spirit calls you to awaken. There will be nothing left of your dream when you hear and answer this Call, because you will then be awake. Your dreams have contained many of the ego’s symbols, and they have confused and frightened you. But that was only because you were asleep and did not remember that you know Reality. When you awaken, you will see the Truth in and around you, and you will no longer believe in dreams, because they will have no reality or meaning for you. But the Realm of Heaven and all that you have created there will have perfect Reality and Meaning for you, because they are eternally True, Beautiful, and Good. In the Realm, where you are and what you are is perfectly Certain. There is no doubt there, because the first question, “What are you?,” was never asked. Having finally been wholly answered, it has never been. Only Being lives in the Realm, where Everything lives in the Divine without question. The time that was spent on questioning in the dream has given way to the Creation and Its Perfection.

 

You are as certain as the Divine because you are as true as It is. But what was once quite certain in your mind has become only the ability for Certainty. The introduction of abilities into being was the beginning of uncertainty, because abilities are potentials, not accomplishments. Your abilities are totally meaningless in the Presence of the Divine’s Creations and also of your own true Accomplishments. Accomplishments are results that have been achieved. Abilities are of no use when their purpose has been perfectly accomplished. The belief that the perfect must be perfected is curious. In fact, perfecting the perfect is impossible. But you must remember that when you put yourself in an impossible situation – the dream of the separation – you believed that the impossible was possible.

Abilities must be developed or they cannot be used. This is not true of anything that the Divine created, but it is the kindest solution possible to what the separated ones made. In an impossible situation, you can develop your abilities to the point where they can assist in getting you out of it. You have a Guide to how to develop them, but you have no sovereign or director except yourself. This leaves you in charge of fulfilling your Part in the Atonement, with both a Guide to find It and the Means to fulfill It. You have a model to follow who will strengthen your sovereignty, and never detract from it in any way. You therefore retain the central place in your perceived exile from the Realm, a fact that itself demonstrates that you are not exiled.

You seem to be in an impossible situation only because you thought it was possible to be in one. You would be in an impossible situation if the Divine showed you your Perfection directly in Its Glory, and thus proved to you that you were insane in entering into your current predicament. This would demonstrate that the Perfect were inadequate to assist in bringing themselves to the re-awareness of their own Perfection, and thus would strengthen the belief that those who have Everything need help, and are therefore helpless. This is the kind of reasoning that the ego engages in, but the Divine, knowing that Its Creations are perfect, does not. This would be as impossible as the ego’s notion that it has insulted or hurt the Divine. That is why the Holy Spirit never commands. To command is to assume inequality, which the Holy Spirit demonstrates does not exist. Fidelity to premises is a Law of the mind, and everything the Divine created is faithful to Its Laws. But for the separated ones, fidelity to other laws is also possible, not because the laws are true, but because they made them up.

What would be gained if the Divine proved to you that you have thought insanely? Can the Divine lose Its Own Certainty? This Course has frequently stated that what you teach you are. Would it be sane for the Divine to teach you that you have sinned? If It confronted the self you made with the Truth that It created for you, what could you be but afraid? You would doubt your sanity, which is the one thing in which you can find again the Sanity It gave you. The Divine does not teach. To teach is to imply a lack that the Divine knows is not there. The Divine is not conflicted. Teaching aims at change, but the Divine created only the Changeless.

The separation was not a loss of Perfection but a temporary failure in communication, and what is temporary by definition has no place in Eternity. A harsh and strident form of communication arose as the ego’s voice in a dream. It could not shatter the Peace of the Divine, but it did shatter the peace of those who chose to listen to it. The Divine did not blot out the ego, because to eradicate it would have been to attack it. Being questioned, the Divine did not question. It merely gave the Answer. The Divine’s Answer is your Teacher.