ARCIM

Daily Lesson 127 ~
May 7

The Love of the Divine is the only love there is.

Perhaps you think that different kinds of love are possible. Perhaps you think there is a kind of love for this, a kind for that, a way of loving one, another way of loving still another.

Love is One. It has no separate parts and no degrees, no kinds or levels or orders, no divergences, and no distinctions. It is only like Itself, unchanged throughout. It never alters with a person or a circumstance. It is the Heart of the Divine and also of Its Creation.

Love’s Meaning is obscure to anyone who thinks that Love can change. They do not understand that a changing love must be impossible. And thus they think that they can love at times and not love at other times. They also think that Love can be bestowed on one and yet remain Itself although It is withheld from others. To believe these things of Love is not to understand It. If It could make such distinctions, It would be bound to a world that perceives the Children of the Divine as separate parts that require judgment between the “lovable” and the “unlovable,” the “righteous” and the “unrighteous.”

Love cannot judge. As It is One Itself, It holds and beholds all as One. Its Meaning rests in Oneness. And this Meaning must elude the mind that thinks of It as partial or in part.

Divine Love is the only love there is because all Love is the Divine’s. There is no principle that rules where Love is not. Love is a Law without an opposite. Its Wholeness is the Power holding Everything as One, the Link between the Creator and the Creation that holds them both forever as the same.

Any course whose purpose is to teach you what you really are must emphasize that there is no difference in what you are and what Love is. Love’s Meaning is your own, and shared by the Divine Itself. For what you are is what the Divine is. Love of the Divine is the only love there is because what It is is Everything there is. There is no limit placed upon Itself, and so are you unlimited as well.

No laws the world obeys can help you grasp Love’s Meaning. The false ideas that are believed in this world were made to hide Love’s Meaning and to keep It secret and in darkness. Every proposition the world of illusions upholds disregards the Truth of what Love is, and what you are as well. Seek not within that world to find your holy Self. While Love’s Presence is Everywhere, Love’s Meaning is not found in darkness and in death. Yet It is perfectly apparent to the eyes that see and ears that hear Its Voice.

Today we practice freeing your mind of all the laws you think you must obey, of all the limits under which you have chosen to live, and all the changes that you think are part of human fate. Today we take the largest single step this Course requests in your advance toward its established Goal. If you achieve the faintest glimmering of what Love means today, you have advanced in distance without measure and in time beyond the count of years to your Release.

Let us together, then, be glad to give some time to the Divine today, and understand there is no better use for time than this. For fifteen minutes twice today release your mind from every law in which you now believe. Open your mind and rest. The world that seems to hold you bound can be transcended by anyone who does not hold it dear. Withdraw all value you have placed upon its meager offerings and senseless gifts, and let the Gift of the Love of the Divine replace them all.

Call to your Creator, certain that Its Voice will answer. It has Itself promised this. And It will Itself kindle a Spark of Truth within your mind wherever you give up a false belief, a dark illusion of your own reality and of what Love means. It will shine through your idle thoughts today, and help you understand the Truth of Love. In loving Gentleness It will abide with you, as you allow Its Voice to reveal Love’s Meaning to your clean and open mind. And It will bless the lesson with Its Love.

The legion of the future years of waiting for awakening disappears before the Timelessness of what you experience today. Let us give thanks today that we are spared a future like the past. Today we leave the past behind us, no more to be remembered. And we raise our eyes upon a present that reflects Eternity, where a future dawns and shines unlike the past in every attribute.

The Real World in infancy is newly born. And we will behold it grow in health and strength to shed its blessing upon all who come to learn to lay aside a world they thought was made in separation to be Love’s opposite. Now are they all made free along with us. Now are they all our sisters and brothers in the Divine’s Love.

We will remember our sisters and brothers throughout the day – those experiencing happy dreams and those experiencing dark ones – because we cannot leave a part of us outside of Love if we would know our holy Self. At least three times an hour think of one who is also on this journey, and who came to learn what you must learn. And as they come to mind, give them this Message from your Self:

“I bless you, _____, with the Love of the Divine

Which I would share with you.

For I would learn the joyous lesson

that the Love of the Divine is the only love there is,

And that this Love is yours and mine and everyone’s.”

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 10: Idols, Gods, or the Divine

 

3. The Decision to Forget or to Remember

This Course has several times considered the defense mechanism of dissociation, or splitting off from something – particularly from thoughts and feelings – in an attempt to be safe from it. It was stated that the only appropriate use of dissociation is to split off from error on behalf of integration. Unless you know or are aware of something, you cannot dissociate it. Knowledge or awareness therefore precedes dissociation, dissociation being nothing more than the decision to forget what you know or are aware of.

Ironically, but always the case following the ego’s direction, the attempt to produce one thing (in this case through the wrong use of dissociation) only produces its opposite. Dissociation’s attempt to produce safety by banishing from awareness what is perceived as danger actually generates threat. This is because while what has been dissociated has been forgotten in consciousness, it has only been pushed into unconsciousness, and is still there. The mind fears the threat of the return of what has been banished, because the act of banishment itself is an attempt to banish Truth. The wrong use of dissociation as a defense mechanism thus always replaces awareness with dreams, because only in dreams can it be believed that anything could be banished from the mind (rather than simply resolved there).

When, in therapy, dissociated material is accepted by the patient, it ceases to be fearful because it is seen to be harmless. This happens even in therapy that isn’t aligned with this Course, for the laws of mind always hold. Whenever the mind allows what it has dissociated to be brought from the darkness of the unconscious to the Light of the superconscious, fear disappears because understanding dawns. This is why when error is dissociated and directly brought to Truth, error dissolves and only Integration remains.

The first act of dissociation: the dissociation and forgetting of Reality by the split mind that caused the separation, also brought the unconscious into existence as a place to “banish” the memory of Reality to. This Memory is still there, at the deepest level of the unconscious, that of miracles. This is an example of how the Holy Spirit repurposes all that has been miscreated by the Children of the Divine into a Blessing for their journey of awakening.

Giving up the dissociation of Reality by bringing Its Memory back into awareness and experiencing again the Blessings of Its Presence results in more than merely lack of fear. In this decision rest Joy, Peace, and the Glory of Creation. Offer the Holy Spirit only your will to remember, for Spirit retains the Knowledge of the Divine and of your true Self for you, waiting for your acceptance. Give up gladly everything that would stand in the way of your remembering, for the Divine is in your memory, and Its Voice will tell you that you are Part of It when you are willing to remember It and know your own reality again. Let nothing in this world delay your remembering of the Divine, for in this remembering is the Knowledge of yourself.

To truly remember is simply to restore to your mind what is already and always there. You are not the author of what you remember; you merely accept again what has been created for you but rejected by you. The ability to accept Truth in this world is the perceptual counterpart of creating in the Realm of Heaven. The Divine will do Its Part and asks only that you do yours. The Divine’s Return to your memory and full awareness in exchange for your Return to Heaven is the exchange of Knowledge in place of perception. Nothing is beyond the Divine’s Will for you. Only signify your will to remember It, and behold! You will be given Everything just for your asking.

Whenever you fear (in any of fear’s forms), you are denying yourself Everything because you are specifically teaching yourself that you are not what you are. Your denial of Reality precludes acceptance of the Divine’s Gifts, because you have accepted something else in Their Place. If you understand that the misuse of defenses always constitutes an attack on Truth – a joining of opposition or battle – and that Truth is the Divine, you will realize why this is always fearful. If you further recognize that you are Part of the Divine, you will also understand why it is that you can only attack yourself.

All attack is therefore self-attack. It cannot be anything else. Arising from your own decision not to be what you are, it is a joining of opposition against your true Identity. Fear in the form of attack is thus the way in which your Identity is temporarily lost to you, because, when you attack, you must have forgotten what and who you are. And if your reality is the Divine’s, then when you fear Reality you are not remembering the Divine. This is not because It is gone, but because you are actively willing not to remember It.

If you realized the complete havoc this inappropriate use of dissociation wreaks on your peace of mind, you could not make such an insane decision. You make it only because you still believe that it can get you something you want, that is, a sense of safety. It follows, then, that you want a sense of safety more than peace of mind, and you have not considered what this exchange must entail. Yet the logical outcome of your decision is perfectly clear, if you will see it. By deciding against your reality, you have made yourself vigilant against the Divine and Its Realm. And it is this vigilance that makes you afraid to remember Reality.

You have not attacked the Divine, and you do love It. Can you change your reality or exchange Reality for something else? No one in their right mind can will to destroy themself. When you think you are attacking or opposing yourself, it is a sure sign that you disdain or believe unworthy what you think you are. And this, and only this, can be attacked or opposed by you. What you think you are can act harmfully, and what this strange image causes you to do can be very destructive. The destruction is no more real than the image, but those who make idols do worship or honor them. The idols are nothing, but those who honor them are the Children of the Divine in separation and sickness.

The Divine would have Its Children released from their belief in separation and sickness and returned to Its Mind. It will not limit your Power to help your sisters and brothers accomplish this, because It has given this Power to you. Do not be afraid of this Power, because It is your awakening. What Comforter can there be for the Children of the Divine whose minds dream of sickness except the Divine’s Power through you? Remember that it does not matter where in the Divine Family Its Will is accepted. It is always accepted for all, and when your mind receives It, the Remembrance of the Divine stirs in all the separated ones.

Heal your sisters and brothers simply by accepting the Divine for them in your own mind, through undoing the false use of dissociation there. Your minds are not separate, and the Divine has only one Channel for healing, because It has only one Divine Family. Its eternal Communication Link with all Its Children – the Holy Spirit – joins us all together, and us to our Creator. To be aware of this is to heal the Divine’s Children, because it is the awareness that no one is separate and nothing but error need ever be dissociated, and so no one can be sick in truth. To believe that a Child of the Divine can be sick is to believe that Part of the Divine can suffer.

Love cannot suffer because It cannot oppose Itself. The Remembrance of Love therefore brings your Invulnerability with It. Do not side with sickness in the presence of a Child of the Divine, even if they believe in it, for your acceptance of the Divine in them acknowledges the Love of the Divine which they have forgotten through their wrong use of dissociation. Your recognition of them as Part of the Divine teaches them the truth about themselves, which they have denied through their belief in sickness. Would you strengthen their denial of the Divine, and thus lose sight of yourself? Or would you remind them of their Wholeness, and remember your Creator with them?

To believe a Child of the Divine is sick is to honor the same idol they do. The Divine created Love, not idolatry. All forms of idolatry are caricatures of creation, taught by minds that are too divided to remember that Creation shares Power, and never usurps It. Sickness is idolatry because it is the belief that Power can be taken from you. But this is impossible, because you are Part of the Divine, Who is all Power.