ARCIM

Daily Lesson 105 ~
April 15

The Divine’s Peace and Joy are mine.

The Divine’s Peace and Joy are yours. Today we will accept Them, knowing They belong to us. And we will try to understand these Gifts increase as we receive Them and give Them away. They are not like the gifts the world can give, in which the giver loses as they give the gift, and the taker is the “richer” by the loss of the giver. Such are not gifts but bargains made with guilt. The truly-given gift entails no loss to anyone.

It is impossible in Truth that one can gain because another loses. This implies a limit and an insufficiency. No true gift is given thus. Such “gifts” are but a bid for a more valuable return, a loan with interest to be paid in full, a temporary lending meant to be a pledge of debt to be repaid with more than was received by them who took the gift. This strange distortion of what giving means pervades all levels of the world you look upon. It strips all meaning from the gifts you give, and leaves you nothing in the ones you receive.

A major learning goal this Course has set is to reverse your view of giving, so you can truly receive. For this distorted view of giving has become a source of anxiety, causing you to avoid the only means by which you can receive. Accept the Divine’s Peace and Joy and you will learn a different way of perceiving the true meaning of a gift. The Divine’s Gifts will never lessen when They are given away. They only increase thereby. As Heaven’s Peace and Joy intensify when you accept Them as the Divine’s Gifts to you, so does the Joy of your Creator grow when you accept Its Joy and Peace as yours.

True giving is Creation. It extends the Infinite to the Unlimited, Eternity to Timelessness, and Love unto Itself. It adds to all that is complete already, not in simple terms of adding more, for that implies that it was less before. It adds by letting what cannot contain Itself fulfill Its Aim of giving Everything It has away, securing It forever for Itself.

Today accept the Divine’s Peace and Joy as yours. Let the Divine complete Itself as It defines Completion. You will understand that what completes It must complete Its Children as well. It cannot give through loss. No more can you. Receive Its Gifts of Joy and Peace today, and It will thank you for your gift to It.

Today our practice periods will start a little differently. Begin today by thinking of those sisters and brothers who have been denied by you the Peace and Joy that belong to them under the equal Laws of the Divine. By denying these Gifts to them you denied Them to yourself. And here you must return, to receive Them as your own. Think a little while of those you do not care for or actively dislike, and tell each one as they occur to you:

“My sister, brother, peace and joy I offer you, that I may receive the Divine’s Peace and Joy as mine.”

Thus you prepare yourself to recognize the Divine’s Gifts to you, and let your mind be free of all that would prevent success today.

Now are you ready to accept the Gifts of Peace and Joy that the Divine has given you. Now are you ready to experience the Joy and Peace you had denied yourself. Now you can say:

“The Divine’s Peace and Joy are mine”

for you have given to your sisters and brothers what you would receive.

You must succeed today if you prepare your mind as we suggest, for you have let all bars to Peace and Joy be lifted, and what is yours can come to you at last. So tell yourself:

“The Divine’s Peace and Joy are mine”

and close your eyes a while, and let the Divine’s Voice assure you that the words you speak are true.

Give your gift of five minutes each hour to the Divine and Its Voice each time you can today, but do not think that less is worth less when you cannot give more. At least remember hourly to say the words that call on the Divine to give you what It wills to give, and wills you to receive.

Determine not to interfere today with what It wills. And if a brother or sister seems to tempt you to deny the Divine’s Gifts to them, see it as just another chance to let yourself receive the Gifts of the Divine as yours. Then bless your sister and brother thankfully, and say:

“My sister, brother, peace and joy I offer you,

that I may have the Divine’s Peace and Joy as mine.”

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 7: Healing and the Realm of Heaven Within

 

7. The Fallacies of Mis-Projection

This Course has said that anger without mis-projection is impossible, but it is also true that without true Projection or Extension there can be no Love. Projection is a fundamental Law of the mind, and therefore one that always operates. It is the Law by which human beings create and were created. It is the Law that unifies the Realm of Heaven and keeps It in the Mind of the Divine. To the ego, the law is perceived as a way of getting rid of something it does not want by casting it away and onto something else, or mis-projection. To the Holy Spirit it is the fundamental Law of sharing, by which you give what you value in order to keep it in your own mind.

Projection to the Holy Spirit is the Law of extending what is Good in order to increase It. To the ego it is the law of deprivation. Projection therefore produces abundance or scarcity, depending on how it is applied. This choice is up to you, but it is not up to you to decide whether or not you will utilize projection one way or another. Every mind must project, because that is how it lives, and every mind is Life.

The ego’s misuse of projection must be fully understood before the inevitable mis-association between projection and anger can be finally unmade. The ego always tries to preserve conflict. It is very ingenious in devising ways that seem to diminish conflict only because it does not want you to find conflict so intolerable that you will insist on giving it up. Therefore, it tries to persuade you that it can free you of conflict, lest you truly give it up and free yourself. The ego, using its own warped version of the Laws of the Divine, uses the power of the mind only to defeat the mind’s real Purpose. It mis-projects conflict from your mind to other minds, in an attempt to persuade you that you have gotten rid of it. This attempt contains a number of fallacies that may not be so apparent.

The first fallacy is that, strictly speaking, conflict cannot be projected, precisely because it cannot be fully shared. Any attempt to keep part of conflict and get rid of another part does not really mean anything. Remember that a conflicted teacher is a poor teacher and a poor learner. The lessons of such a teacher are confused, and their transfer value severely limited by this confusion.

A second fallacy is the idea that you can get rid of something you do not want by casting or giving it away. Giving something is how you keep it. The belief that by giving out you have excluded from within is a complete distortion of the Power of Extension. It is because of the distortion of this Power that those who project from the ego, or mis-project, are vigilant for their own safety. They are afraid that their mis-projections will return and hurt them. They do believe that they have blotted out of their own minds what they have mis-projected, but they also believe that these things are trying to creep back into them. This is because their mis-projections have not left their minds, and this, in turn, forces them to engage in compulsive activity in order not to recognize this.

This meaningless loop relates to a broader principle: No one can perpetuate an illusion about another without perpetuating it about themself. There is no way out of this, because it is impossible to fragment the one true Mind, or to break It into pieces.

A further fallacy is that mind can attack. The belief that it can, a fallacy that the ego always makes, underlies the ego’s entire use of projection. This is because it does not understand what the mind is, and therefore does not understand what you are. Yet the ego’s existence is dependent on your mind because the ego is a belief. The ego is therefore a confusion in identification. The ego never had a consistent model, and never developed consistently. It is the distorted product of the misapplication of the Laws of the Divine by distorted minds that are misusing their own Power.

It is imperative, therefore, that you not be afraid of the ego. The ego’s existence does depend on your mind, and as you made it by believing in it so you can dispel it by withdrawing belief from it. But to do so you cannot fear it or fear punishment for the mis-projections the ego has made. Do not mis-project the responsibility for your belief in the ego onto anyone or anything else or you will preserve the belief. When you are willing to accept sole responsibility for the ego’s existence in yourself, you will have laid aside all anger and all belief in attack, and counterattack in the name of self-defense, because these come from an attempt to project outside of yourself responsibility for your own errors. Once you have accepted all your errors as yours, do not keep holding onto them. Give them over quickly to the Holy Spirit and to the Atonement to be undone completely, so that all their effects will vanish from your mind and from the Divine Family as a whole. Spirit will teach you to perceive beyond belief, because Truth is beyond belief and Its Perception is true.

The ego can be completely forgotten at any time because it was and is always a belief that is totally incredible, or without credibility. No one can keep a belief they have judged to be unbelievable. The more you learn about the ego, the more you realize that it cannot be believed. Because the non-credible is unbelievable it cannot be understood. The utter meaninglessness of all perception that comes from the unbelievable must become apparent, even if it is not beyond belief because it was made by belief.

The whole Purpose of this Course is to teach you that the ego is unbelievable and will forever be unbelievable. You who made the ego by believing the unbelievable cannot make the shift to Sanity alone. By accepting the Atonement for yourself you are deciding against the belief that you can be alone, thus dispelling the idea of separation and affirming your true Identification with the whole Realm of Heaven as literally part of you, as you are Part of It. This Identification is as beyond doubt as It is beyond belief. Your Wholeness has no limits because Its Being is in Infinity.