ARCIM

Daily Lesson 189 ~
July 8

I feel the Love of the Divine within me now.

There is a Light in you that the world of illusions cannot perceive. And with the world’s eyes you will not see this Light, for those eyes are blinded by the world. Yet you have vision to see this Light. It is there for you to behold. It was not placed in you to be kept hidden from your sight. The thought we practice now reflects this Light. To feel the Love of the Divine within you is to see the world anew, shining in Innocence, alive with Hope, and blessed with perfect Charity and Love.

Who could feel fear in such a world as this? The Real World welcomes you, rejoices that you came, and sings your praises as it keeps you safe from every form of danger and of pain. It offers you a warm and gentle home in which to stay a while. It blesses you throughout the day, and watches through the night as silent guardian of your holy sleep. This lovely world sees awakening in you, and protects the Light in you in which it sees its own. It offers you its flowers and its snow and all its beauty in thankfulness for your benevolence.

This is the world the Love of the Divine reveals. It is so different from the world you look upon through darkened eyes of fear and guilt that one belies the other. Only one can be truly perceived at all. The other one is entirely meaningless. A world in which forgiveness shines on everything and Peace offers Its gentle Light to everyone is inconceivable to those who look upon a world of conflict, rising from fear, poised to attack, hurt and eliminate.

Yet is the world of conflict equally unperceived and inconceivable to those who feel the Divine’s Love in them. Their world reflects the Quietness and Peace that shines in them, the Gentleness and Innocence they see surrounding them, the Happiness with which they perceive from the endless Wells of Joy within. What they have felt in themselves they behold, and see Its sure Reflection everywhere.

What would you perceive? The choice is given you. Simply learn and do not let your mind forget this law of perceiving: You will perceive that which you feel within. If conflict finds a place within your heart, you will perceive a fearful world, held cruelly in death’s sharp-pointed, bony fingers. If you feel the Love of the Divine within you, you will perceive a world of Mercy and of Love.

Today we pass illusions by as we seek to reach to what is true in us, and feel Its all-embracing Tenderness, Its Love that knows us perfect as Itself, Its Sight that is the Gift Its Love bestows on us. We learn the Way today. It is as sure as Love Itself, to which the Way carries us. For Its Simplicity avoids the snares the foolish convolutions of the world’s apparent reasoning merely serve to hide.

Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what the Divine is, all concepts you have learned about the world, and all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned from anything before. Forget this world, forget this Course, and come with wholly empty hands unto the Divine.

The Divine knows the Way to you. You need not know the Way to It. Your part is simply to allow all obstacles that you have interposed between yourself and your Creator to be quietly removed forever. The Divine will do Its Part in joyful and immediate Response. Ask and receive. But do not make demands, nor point the road to the Divine by which It should appear to you. The Way to reach It is merely to let It be. For in that Way is your reality acclaimed as well.

And so today we do not choose the way in which we go Home to our Creator. But we do choose to let It come to us, and with this choice we rest. And in our quiet hearts and open minds Its Love will blaze Its Pathway of Itself. What has been denied is surely there, if It be true, and It can be surely reached by removing denial of It. The Divine knows Its Children, and knows the Way to reach them. It does not need Its Children to show It how to find Its Way. Through every opened door Its Love shines forth from Its Home within, and lightens up the world in Innocence.

 

Creator, You know the Way for us to embrace again our Oneness with You. We have called to you and You have answered us. We will not interfere with Your Answer. Awakening’s Ways belong to You, and it is unto You we turn for Them. Our hands are open to receive Your Gifts. We have no thoughts that we would think apart from You, and cherish no beliefs of what we are or who created us. Yours is the Way that we would be shown and follow. And we ask only that Your Will, Which is our own as well, be done in us and in the world, that it become a Part of Heaven now. Amen.

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 17: The Illusion of the Special Relationship

 

4. The Special Love and Hate Relationships

Have courage to perceive the special hate relationship clearly, for freedom from guilt is found in truly perceiving it. It would be impossible not to know the Meaning of Love except through keeping the special hate relationship hidden. For the special love relationship, in which the Meaning of Love is lost, is undertaken solely to offset the special hate relationship, but not to let it go. Your awakening will rise unambiguously before your open eyes as you perceive the special hate relationship clearly.

You cannot limit hate—the intense disdain the ego has of everything it believes is not itself. The special love relationship will not offset hate, but will merely drive it underground and out of sight. It is essential that you bring this disdain or antipathy into sight, and to make no attempt to hide it. For it is the attempt to balance hate with love, antipathy with sympathy, that makes Love meaningless to you. You do not realize the extent of the split that results from this attempt. And until you do, the split will remain unrecognized, and therefore unhealed.

The symbols of hate against the symbols of love play out a conflict that does not exist. For symbols stand for something else, and the symbol of love is without meaning, if Love is Everything. You will go through this last undoing quite unharmed, and will emerge as yourself. This is the last step in the Readiness for the Divine. Be willing now that you are so near, and you will cross the Bridge with perfect Safety, translated quietly from conflict to Peace. For the illusion of love will never satisfy you. But Love’s Reality, which awaits you on the other side, will give you Everything.

The special love relationship is an attempt to limit the destructive effects of hate by finding a haven in the storm of guilt. It makes no attempt to rise above the storm into the Light. On the contrary, it emphasizes guilt outside this haven by attempting to build barricades against guilt, and keep within them. The special love relationship is not perceived as of value in itself, but as a place of safety from which hatred is split off and kept apart. The special love partner is acceptable only as long as they serve this purpose. Antipathy can enter, and indeed is welcome in some aspects of the relationship, but it is still held together by the illusion of love. If the illusion of love goes away, the relationship is broken or becomes unsatisfying, on the grounds of disillusionment.

Disillusion can come only where first illusion was. Love is not an illusion; it is a Fact. Where disillusionment is possible there was not Love, but hate. For “love” that can change was never Love. And hate is an illusion because what is unlike you cannot be real.

It is certain that those who select certain ones as partners in any aspect of living, and use them for any purpose that they would not share with others, are trying to live with guilt rather than be destroyed by it, which are the only choices they perceive. And so love to them is ultimately only an attempted escape from death. They seek escape desperately, but not in the Peace in which it would gladly come quietly to them. And when they find the fear of death is still upon them, the special love relationship loses the illusion that it is what it is not. For when the barricades against it are broken, fear rushes in and disdain triumphs.

There are no “triumphs” of Love. Only hate is concerned with the “triumph of love” at all. The illusion of love can triumph over the illusion of hate, but always at the price of casting Love as an illusion. As long as the illusion of hate lasts, so long will love be an illusion to you. And then the only choice that remains possible is which illusion you prefer, for you cannot make either of them true.

There is no conflict in the choice between Truth and illusion. Seen in these terms, no one would hesitate to choose Truth rather than illusion. But conflict enters the instant the choice seems to be one between illusions, for though such a choice does not matter in truth, to the ego – the author of conflict – each choice between illusions is held as deeply important. Yet where one choice is as meaningless and therefore erosive to your sanity as another, a decision between them must merely be one of despair.

Your task is not to seek for Love, Which is always present, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against Love. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false, for what is false has been hidden by the ego to keep it from awareness. Every illusion is one of fear, whatever form it takes. And the attempt to escape from one illusion into another must fail, just like every illusion. If you seek Love outside yourself, you can be certain that you foster disdain within, and are afraid of it. Peace can never come from the illusion of love, but only from Love’s Reality. Recognize this, for it is true, and Truth must be recognized if It is to be distinguished from illusion.

The special love relationship is an attempt to bring Love into separation. And, as such, it is nothing more than an attempt to bring Love into fear and thus to make fear real. In fundamental violation of Love’s one Condition, the special love relationship would thus attempt to accomplish the impossible and change Reality. How but in illusion could this be attempted?

It is essential that we perceive very clearly together exactly what it is you think you can do—which is to solve a dilemma that seems very real to you but that does not exist. You have come very close to Truth. And only this attempt to solve a dilemma that does not exist stands between you and the Bridge that leads you into Reality. Heaven waits silently, and your creations are holding out their hands to help you cross the Bridge and welcome them. For it is they you seek when you think you seek special love. Your seeking is only for your own Completion through your true creations, and it is they who render you complete.

The special love relationship is merely a shabby substitute for what makes you whole in Truth, not in illusion. Your relationship with your true creations is without guilt, and this enables you to behold all your sisters and brothers with gratitude, because your creations are created in union with them. Acceptance of your creations is the acceptance of the Oneness of Creation, without which you would never remember your Completion. No specialness can offer you what the Divine has given, and what you are joined with in giving. Across the Bridge is your Completion, for there you will be wholly in the Divine, willing for nothing special, but only to be wholly like unto your Creator, completing It by your Completion.

Have courage and confidence to cross to the abode of Peace and perfect Holiness. Only there is the Completion of the Divine and of Its Children established forever. Seek not for this in the bleak world of illusion, where nothing is certain, and where everything fails to satisfy. And in the Name of the Divine, be entirely willing to abandon all illusion. In any relationship in which you are wholly willing to accept Completion, and only this, there is the Divine completed, and Its Children with It. The Bridge that leads to Union in yourself must lead to Knowledge, for It was built with the Divine beside you, and will lead you straight to the Divine, where your Completion rests, wholly compatible with Its.

Every illusion that you accept into your mind by judging it to be attainable removes your own sense of Completion, and thus denies the Wholeness of your Creator. Every fantasy, be it of love or hate, deprives you of Knowledge. For fantasies are the veil behind which Truth has been hidden by the ego. To lift the veil, which seems so dark and heavy, it is only needful to value Truth beyond all fantasy, and to be entirely unwilling to settle for illusion in place of Truth.

You will go through fear to Love. For such the journey seems to be. Love calls, though disdain would bid you stay. Hear not the call of hate, and look upon no fantasies. For your Completion is in Truth and nowhere else. See in the call of hate, and in every fantasy that rises to delay you, merely the call for help that rises ceaselessly from you and your sisters and brothers to your Creator. Your Creator always answers you, whose Completion is Its. It loves you wholly without illusion, as you must learn to love. For Love is wholly without illusion, and therefore wholly without fear or any of its forms.

Whom the Divine remembers must be whole. And the Divine has always remembered what makes It whole. In your Completion is the Memory of the Divine’s Wholeness, and Its Gratitude to you for Its Completion. In Its Link with you are both the impossibility of the Divine forgetting you, and your ability to remember It. In this Link, all the Love of the Divine is joined with your willingness to love. Our Creator can no more forget the Truth in you than you can fail to remember It. The Holy Spirit is the Bridge to the Creator, created from your willingness to unite with It, and by Its Joy in Union with you.

The journey that seemed to be endless is almost complete, for what is Endless is very near. You have almost recognized It. Turn with me firmly away from all illusion and fantasy now, and let nothing stand in the way of Truth. Together we will take the last journey through fear and seemingly away from Love, but actually only away from what has been the illusion of love. And then together we go straight to the Divine, in joyous response to Its Call for Completion.

If special relationships of any kind would hinder the Divine’s Completion, can they have any value to you? What would interfere with the Divine must interfere with you. Only in time does interference in the Divine’s Completion even seem to be possible. The Bridge that the Divine would carry you across in the Final Step lifts you from time into Eternity. Awaken from time, and answer fearlessly the Call of It Who gave Eternity to you in your creation. On this side of the Bridge to Timelessness you do not truly understand anything. But as you step lightly across It, upheld by Timelessness, you are directed straight to the Heart of Knowledge. At Its Center, and only there, are you safe forever, because you are complete forever. There is no veil the Love of the Divine in us together cannot lift. The Way to Truth is open. Follow It with me.