ARCIM

Daily Lesson 186 ~
July 5

Awakening of the world depends on my acceptance.

Here is the statement that will one day take all arrogance away from every mind. Here is the Thought of true humbleness that holds no function as your own except that which has been given you by the Divine. It offers your acceptance of a part assigned to you, without insisting on another role. It does not judge your proper role. It simply acknowledges that the Will of the Divine is done on Earth as well as in Heaven. It unites all wills on Earth in Heaven’s Plan to awaken the world, restoring Earth to Heaven’s Peace.

Let us not resist or oppose our function here. We did not establish it. It is not our idea. The Means are given us by which it will be perfectly accomplished. All that we are asked to do is to accept our part with genuine humbleness, and not deny with self-deceiving arrogance that we are worthy. What is given us to do we have the Strength to do. Our minds are suited perfectly to take the part assigned to us by One Who knows us well.

Today’s idea may seem quite sobering until you see its meaning. All It says is that your Creator will always remember you, and offers you the perfect Trust It holds in you who are Its Child. It does not ask that you be different in any way from what you truly are. What could humbleness request but this? And what could arrogance deny but this? Today we will not shrink from our assignment on the specious grounds that modesty is outraged. It is pride that would deny the Call of the Divine Itself.

All false humility we lay aside today that we may listen to the Divine’s Voice reveal to us what It would have us do. We do not doubt our adequacy for the function It will offer us. We will be certain only that It knows our strengths, our wisdom, and our holiness. And if It deems us worthy, so we are. It is only arrogance that judges otherwise.

There is one way, and only one, to be released from the imprisonment your plan to prove that the false is true has brought to you. Accept instead of yours the Plan you did not make. Judge not your value to Spirit. If the Divine’s Voice assures you that Awakening of the world needs your part, and that the whole depends on your acceptance, be sure that it is so. The arrogant must cling to words, afraid to go beyond them to experience that might affront their stance. Yet are the humble free to hear the Voice that tells them what they are and what to do.

Arrogance makes an image of yourself that is not real. It is this image that quails and retreats in terror as the Voice of the Divine assures you that you have the Strength, the Wisdom, and the Holiness to go beyond all images. You are not weak, as is the image of yourself. You are not ignorant and helpless. Neither error nor the belief in separation can tarnish the Truth in you, and misery can come not near the holy Host and Home of the Divine.

All this the Voice of the Divine relates to you. And as It speaks, the image you made trembles and seeks to attack the threat it does not comprehend, sensing its basis crumble. Let it go. Awakening of the world depends on your acceptance, and not upon the approval of a little pile of animated dust and water. What can it tell the holy Children of the Divine? Why need they be concerned with it at all?

And so we find our Peace. We will accept the function the Divine has given us here, for all illusions rest upon the strange belief that we can make another for ourselves. Our self-made roles continuously shift, and they seem to change from mourner to ecstatic bliss of loved and loving. We can laugh or weep, and greet the day with welcome or with tears. Our very being seems to change as we experience a thousand shifts in mood, and our emotions raise us high indeed or dash us to the ground in hopelessness. Is this the Child of the Divine? Could the Divine create such instability and call it Child?

It Who is changeless shares Its Attributes with Its Creation. All the images Its Children appear to make have no effect on what they truly are. These images blow across their minds like wind-swept leaves that form a patterning an instant, break apart to group again, and scamper off. Or like mirages in a desert, rising from the dust. These unsubstantial images will go, and leave your mind unclouded and serene, when you accept your function here, given you by the Divine.

The images you make merely give rise to conflicting goals that are impermanent and ambiguous, blurred and uncertain. Who could be constant in their efforts or direct their energies and concentrated drive toward goals like these? The functions that the world esteems are so uncertain that they change ten times an hour at their most secure. What hope of gain can rest on goals like these?

In lovely contrast, certain as the Sun’s return each morning to dispel the night, your truly-given function here stands out clear and wholly unambiguous. There is no doubt of its Validity. It comes from One Who knows no error. And Its Voice is certain of Its Messages. They will neither change nor be in conflict. All of Them point to one Goal, and one you can attain. Your plan may be impossible, but the Divine’s can never fail because It is Its Source.

Therefore do as the Divine’s Voice directs. And if It asks a thing of you that seems impossible, remember Who it is that asks and who would make denial. Then consider this: which is more likely to be true—the Voice that speaks for the Creator of all things, Who knows all things exactly as they are, or a distorted image of yourself: confused, bewildered, inconsistent and unsure of everything? Let not its voice direct you. Hear instead a certain Voice That tells you of your function here, given you by your Creator, Who remembers you and urges that you now remember your function. And It will guide you in how to fulfill what may even seem impossible to conception and perception that doesn’t yet see.

Its gentle Voice is calling from the Known to the unknowing. For the Divine would comfort you although It knows no sorrow. It would make a Restitution though It is complete, a Gift to you although It knows that you have Everything already. Its Thoughts answer every need Its Children perceive, although It sees not these needs. For Love must give, and what is given in Its Nature and Name takes on the form most useful in a world of form.

These are the forms that never can deceive, because they come from Formlessness Itself. Forgiveness is an earthly form of perfect Love, though Love in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function here, although what Love will mean to you when Formlessness has been restored to you is greater still. Awakening of the world depends on your acceptance who can forgive. Such is your function here.

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 17: The Illusion of the Special Relationship

 

1. True Empathy and the Meeting of All Needs

To empathize means to feel into, and the heart of one can indeed resonate with the heart of another. It does not mean to join in suffering, an alternative interpretation that must be declined. For this is the ego’s interpretation of empathy, and is always used to form special exclusive relationships, in which suffering seems to be shared.

Your capacity to truly empathize is very useful to the Holy Spirit provided you let It use it in Its Way. Its Way is very different than the ego’s way. Spirit does not understand suffering, and would have you teach that it is not understandable. When Spirit relates through you, It does not relate through your ego to another ego. It does not join in suffering, knowing that healing suffering is not accomplished by delusional attempts to enter into it and lighten it by sharing the delusion.

The clearest proof that empathy as the ego uses it is destructive lies in the fact that it is applied only to certain types of problems, and with certain people. These it selects out and joins in suffering with. And it never joins except to strengthen itself, that is, the bitterness it feels in believing that it must make sacrifice to get what it wants. Having identified with what it thinks it understands, the ego looks only upon itself, and would increase itself by sharing what is like itself. Make no mistake about this maneuver: the ego always empathizes to weaken. And to weaken is always to attack.

You are now learning what true empathizing means. And of this you can be sure: if you will merely sit quietly by, and let the Holy Spirit relate through you with a brother or sister, you will empathize with Strength, and both of you will gain in Strength, and not in weakness. Your part is only to remember this: you do not want anything that the ego values, or that you value when you identify with the ego, to come of any relationship. You must learn to desire neither to hurt any relationship, nor to heal it in your own way. This is because you are still learning what healing is.

All you have learned of empathy in the past was from the ego and its attempts to bind you to the past. And the only thing from the past that you would truly and wholly share is what you experienced and learned of Spirit there, for only that would you keep forever. And that is no longer past but present now, being eternal. Do not use empathy to make any other part of the past real, and so perpetuate it. Step gently aside, and let the healing be done for you. Keep only one Thought in mind, and do not lose sight of It, however tempted you may be to judge any situation and to determine your response by your judgment. Focus your mind only on this:

 

My Guest is with me now. And I would not intrude the past upon Its Presence. I have invited It, and It is here. I need do nothing except not to interfere with Its Way.

 

True Empathy is of Spirit, Who knows what It is. You will learn Its Interpretation of empathy if you let It use your capacity for Strength, because It cannot use your capacity for weakness, and so this capacity is useless. Spirit will not desert you, but be sure that you don’t desert It. Humbleness is Strength in this sense only: that to recognize and accept the fact that you don’t yet know what true Empathy is is to recognize and accept the fact that Spirit does know. You are not yet sure that It will do Its Part, because you have not yet done yours completely. How can you know how to respond to what you don’t understand? Be tempted not in this, and yield not to the ego’s “triumphant” use of empathy, for its “glory.” The triumph of weakness is not what you would offer to a brother or sister. Yet this is the kind of triumph you are familiar with. This is not Knowledge, and the form of empathy that would bring this kind of triumph about is so distorted that it would imprison what it would seemingly release.

Those who have not yet allowed themselves to be awakened cannot awaken another, yet they have an Awakener. Don’t attempt to teach this Awakener Its Function. You are the learner, and It the Teacher. Do not confuse your role with Its, for this can never bring Peace to anyone. Offer your impulse for empathy to It, for it is Spirit’s Perception and Strength you would share, rather than another’s suffering. And let It offer you Its Strength and Perception, to be shared through you.

The Meaning of Love is lost in any relationship that looks to the ego’s weakness and hopes to find Love’s Meaning there. The Power of Love, which is Its Meaning, is in the Strength of the Divine, Which hovers over suffering and weakness and blesses them silently by enveloping them in healing Wings. Let this be, and do not try to substitute for the Power of Love your “miracle” of mistaken empathy with weakness and suffering.

This Course once suggested to respond with miraculous thinking if a brother or sister requests or demands something of you that you might initially consider “outrageous.” But be certain that miraculous thinking will not lead you to do a foolish thing that would seem to hurt either another or yourself, for what would seem to hurt one will seem to hurt the other. Foolish requests are not “outrageous,” they merely reflect the belief in foolish needs. Needs become foolish for the simple reason that they contain elements of specialness and therefore are in conflict.

Only the Holy Spirit recognizes the essence of foolish needs as well as of real ones. And It will teach you how to meet both without losing the essence of either. You have attempted to meet what you consider foolish or conflicting needs only in secrecy so you could decide how best to do so. And you have thought that by meeting your own needs and responding to the needs of others as you deem best you will minimize conflict. Thus you have kept the meeting of needs – real and foolish, yours as well as those of others – separate and secret from each other. This is not the Way, for it leads not to Light and Truth.

No needs will long be left unmet if you lift them all to Spirit, Whose Function is to meet them all. And this is Its Function, and not yours. It will not meet needs secretly, for It will share everything that you give to your sisters and brothers through It. And that is how It meets all needs. What you give through It is for the whole Divine Family, not for part of It. Leave Spirit Its Function, for It will fulfill It if you simply ask It to enter your relationships and bless them for you.