ARCIM

Daily Lesson 152 ~
June 1

The power of the decision of attention and perspective is my own.

The Divine honors the Freedom of the creative activity of Its Children, even when this activity departs from Truth and enters a dream. For otherwise what Meaning would Freedom have? Thus Divine Law guarantees that no one can suffer loss unless it be their own decision. No one suffers pain except their choice elects this state for them. No one can grieve or fear or think themself sick unless these are the outcomes that they want in time, and no one dies without their own consent.

Nothing happens to you except what represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its entire reality for you. And it is only here that awakening is needed, and only here can it be found.

You may believe that this position is extreme, and too inclusive to be true. Yet can Truth have exceptions? If you have the Gift of Everything, can loss be real? Can pain be part of Peace, or grief of Joy? Can fear and sickness enter in a mind where Love and perfect Holiness abide?

Truth must be all-inclusive if it be the Truth at all. Accept no opposite and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the Truth entirely, and to render It untrue in your experience. Awakening is the Recognition that the Truth is true and nothing else is true. This distinction you have heard many times before in this Course, but you may not yet have accepted with no exceptions both parts. Without the first part the second has no meaning, but without the second is the first no longer true.

Truth cannot have an opposite. This cannot be too often said and thought about. For if what is not true is true as well as what is true, then part of Truth is false, and Truth has lost its Meaning. Nothing but the Truth is true, and what is false is false. This is the simplest of distinctions, yet likely to be made the most obscure. But not because it is a difficult distinction to perceive. It is concealed behind a vast array of choices which do not appear to be entirely your own, such as loss, pain, sickness, grief, fear, and death. And thus the Truth appears to have some aspects that belie consistency, but do not seem only to be contradictions introduced by you.

Because the Divine created you you must remain unchangeable, with transitory states by definition false. And that includes all shifts in feeling, alterations in conditions of the body and the mind, in all awareness and in all response. This is the All-Inclusiveness that sets the Truth apart from falsehood, and the false as what it is kept separate from the Truth.

Is it not strange that you believe that to think you made the world you look upon is arrogance? Of this you can be sure: the Divine created it not. What can the Divine know of the ephemeral, of fear and guilt, of grief and suffering and loneliness, and the mind that believes it is separate and lives within a body that must die? You accuse the Divine of insanity to think It made a world where such things seem to have reality. The Divine is not mad. Yet only madness could seem to make a world like this.

But it is arrogant indeed to think that the Divine made chaos, invented an opposite to Truth, and allows death to triumph over Life. Humbleness sees at once that these things are not of the Divine. And can you actually perceive what the Divine created not? To think you can is merely to believe that you can perceive what the Divine willed not to be. And what could be more arrogant than this?

Let us today be truly humble, and accept what we ourselves have made for what it is. The power of the decision of attention and perspective is our own. Decide only to accept your rightful place as cocreator of the Universe, and all you think you made will disappear. What rises to awareness then, by your decision, will be all that there ever was, eternally as it is now. And it will take the place of the self-deceptive framing of the world made only to usurp the Altar to the Creator and the Creation.

Today we practice true humbleness, abandoning the false pretense by which the ego seeks to prove that humbleness is arrogant. Only the ego mindset can be arrogant, because it is nothingness acting as if it is something. But Truth is humble in acknowledging Its Mightiness, Its Changelessness, and Its all-encompassing eternal Wholeness. These are the Divine’s perfect Gifts to Its beloved Children. We lay aside the arrogance that proclaims that we are unholy, separate, guilty and afraid, and ashamed of what we are. And we lift our hearts with true humbleness instead to It Who has created us immaculate, like to Itself in Power and in Love.

The power of the decision of our attention and perspective is our own, for our Power to frame the world as we choose will always remain with us while we are on this side of the Gate of Heaven. And as we conceive or frame the world, we determine our reality and all that we experience here. So we choose to accept from the Divine that which we are, and humbly recognize ourselves as Children of the Divine. To recognize the Divine’s Child implies as well that all self-concepts have been laid aside and recognized as false. Their arrogance has been perceived. And in humbleness the Radiance of the Divine’s Children – their Gentleness, their perfect Innocence, their Creator’s Love, their right to Heaven and Release from hell – are joyously accepted as our own.

Now do we join in glad acknowledgment the truth that all lies are false and only Truth is true. We think of Truth alone as we arise, and spend five minutes practicing Its Ways, encouraging our frightened minds with this:

 

“The power of the decision of attention and perspective is my own. This day I will accept myself as what my Creator’s Will created me to be.”

 

Then will we wait in silence, giving up all self-deceptions as we humbly ask our holy Self that It reveal Itself to us. And Divine Essence, Who never left us, will come again to our awareness, grateful to restore us to our Home in the Divine as this was meant to be.

With patience wait for It throughout the day, and hourly invite It with the words with which the day began, concluding the day with this same invitation to your Self. The Divine’s Voice will answer, for It speaks for you and for your Creator. It will give you the Peace of the Divine in exchange for all your frantic thoughts and false perspectives, the Truth of the Divine for self-deceptions, and the Divine’s Child for your illusions of yourself.

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 13: From Guilt to the Promise of Heaven

 

2. The Darkest of the Ego’s Cornerstones

The ultimate purpose of projection, as the ego uses it, is always to get rid of guilt by casting it away, but characteristically it attempts to get rid of it based on its viewpoint only rather than Truth. For as much as the ego wants to retain guilt, you find it intolerable. This is because guilt stands in the way of your remembering the Divine, Whose Pull is so strong that you cannot resist It. On this issue, then, the deepest split of all occurs, for if you are to retain guilt, as the ego secretly insists, you cannot be you. Only by persuading you that it is you could the ego possibly induce you to project guilt, and thereby keep it in your mind.

Just consider how strange a solution the ego’s arrangement is. You project guilt seemingly to get rid of it, but you actually merely conceal it. You do experience guilt feelings, but you have no idea why. On the contrary, you associate them with a weird assortment of ego ideals that the ego claims you have failed. You have no idea that you are actually failing the Children of the Divine by looking upon them as guilty. Believing that you are no longer you but instead your ego, you do not realize that you are actually looking upon yourself as guilty and therefore failing yourself.

The darkest of the ego’s hidden cornerstones holds your belief in guilt from your own awareness. For in that dark and secret place is the belief that you have betrayed the Divine by condemning Its Children to death. You do not even suspect that this mad murderous idea lies hidden there. For the ego’s destructive urge is so intense that nothing short of the destruction of the Divine’s Children can ultimately satisfy it. Because the ego is blind it does not know who the Children of the Divine or their Creator are. But let it perceive innocence anywhere and it will try to destroy it, because it is afraid.

Much of the ego’s strange behavior is directly attributable to its twisted definition of guilt. To the ego, the guiltless are guilty. Those who do no harm are the ego’s “enemies” because by not valuing the ego’s interpretation of “salvation” they are in an excellent position to let it go. They have approached the darkest and deepest cornerstone in the foundation of the ego’s thought system, and while the ego can withstand your raising all else to question, it guards this one secret with its existence, for its existence does depend on keeping this secret. And it is this secret that we must observe calmly and clearly, for the ego cannot protect you from Truth, or hide Truth from you if you want It. And in Truth’s Presence the ego is dispelled.

In the calm Light of Truth let us recognize that, associating yourself with the ego aspect of your mind, you believe you have brought harm upon the Divine’s Child—your true Self. For you have banished It from your awareness. You have not admitted this “terrible” secret because the ego masquerading as your self still wishes to destroy the Divine Child if it could find It. This wish has hidden the Child from you because the wish is frightening and therefore you are afraid to find the Child. You have handled the ego’s wish to kill your holy Self by not knowing who you are, and identifying with something else. Through your ego you have projected guilt blindly and indiscriminately, but you have not yet uncovered your guilt’s source. For the ego in its madness does want to kill your Self, and if you identify with the ego, you must believe its goal is yours, and you must feel guilty about this.

Earlier this Course said that the crucifixion – the belief in abandonment and martyrdom – is the symbol of the ego. When the ego was confronted with the real Innocence of the Divine’s Child, it did attempt to kill It through the crucifixion. And the reason it gave was that Innocence is blasphemous to god. From the ego’s perspective, it is god, and Innocence must be interpreted as the final guilt that fully justifies murder. You do not yet understand that any fear of awakening stems ultimately from this interpretation of Innocence by the ego, but if you will consider the adverse reactions to awakening you may still have, you will become increasingly convinced that this is so.

This Course has explicitly stated that the goal of awakening for all Children of the Divine is Happiness and Peace. Yet some are afraid of awakening. This Course has continually confirmed that awakening will set you free, yet some react as if it is trying to imprison them. Some simply dismiss what they feel to be the challenging aspects of awakening and of this Course, but they do not dismiss the ego’s thought system. Some have seen the results of this Course and yet still lack faith in it. Those who feel this way must, then, believe that by not learning awakening they are protecting themselves. They do not yet realize that it is only their Innocence that protects them.

The Atonement has been described as the release from guilt, and this is true if release is correctly understood as the undoing of guilt through perceiving it clearly, rather than the attempt to get rid of guilt through mis-projection. Yet even though I have presented the Atonement truly in this Course, some have rejected It by not accepting It for themselves. Some have recognized the futility of the ego and its offerings, and though they do not want it, they are as yet unwilling to embrace the Alternative with gladness. All of these reactions are ultimately a result of being afraid of awakening, believing as the ego does that awakening means death. Make no mistake about the depth of this fear. For the ego’s secret message to you, which it teaches incessantly, is that in the Presence of Truth you will turn on yourself and destroy yourself.

Sisters and brothers, this is not so. Your “guilty secret” is nothing, and if you will only bring it to Light of your own free will, the Light will dispel it. And then no dark cloud will remain between you and the Remembrance of your Creator. For you will remember Its innocent Child, your holy Self, who did not and cannot die because It is immortal. And you will see that you were awakened with this Child, and have never been separated from It. In this understanding rests your remembering, for it is the Recognition of Love without fear. There will be great Joy in the Realm of Heaven with your Homecoming, and the Joy will also be yours. For the awakened human being is the innocent Child of the Divine, and to recognize It is your awakening.