ARCIM

Daily Lesson 171 ~
June 20

Introduction to Review of Lessons 151-170

Review Lessons 151 and 152

Introduction to Review of Lessons 151-170

 We now review again. This time we are ready to give more effort and more time to what we undertake. We recognize we are preparing for another phase of understanding. We would take this step completely, that we may go on again more certain, more sincere, with faith upheld more surely. Our footsteps have wavered at times, and then doubts have made us walk uncertainly and slowly on the Way this Course sets forth. But now we move forward without distraction, for we approach a greater certainty, a firmer purpose, and a surer goal.

 

Steady our feet, our Creator. Let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still, and speak to us. We have no words to give to You. We would only listen to Your Word of Truth and Love and make It ours. Lead our practicing as does a parent lead a child along a way the child does not yet understand. Yet do they follow, sure that they are safe because their parent leads the way for them.

So do we bring our practicing to You. And if we stumble, You will raise us up. If we forget the Way, we count upon Your sure Remembering. We may wander off, but You will not forget to call us back. Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You. And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the Thoughts that You have given us.

 

This is the Thought that should precede the lessons that we now review:

 

“The Divine is perfect Love, and therefore so am I.”

 

Each lesson we review just clarifies some aspect of this Thought, or helps It be more meaningful, more personal and true, and more descriptive of the holy Self we share and now prepare to know again.

This Self alone knows Love. This Self alone is perfectly Consistent in Its Thoughts. It knows Its Creator, understands Itself, is perfect in Its Knowledge and Its Love, and never changes from Its constant State of Union with Its Creator and Itself.

And it is this Self that waits to meet us at the journey’s Ending, as It accompanies us each step of the way. Every step we take brings us a little nearer. This review will shorten time immeasurably if we keep in mind as we practice that our holy Self remains our Goal, and that it is our Self we are approaching. Let us raise our hearts from dust to Life as we remember that meeting our Self at the journey’s Ending is promised us, and that this Course was sent to open up the Path of Light to us, and teach us, step by step, how to return to the eternal Self we thought we lost.

I take this journey with you. For I hold your doubts and fears with you a little while, that you may walk with me who recognizes the Way by which all fears and doubts are overcome. We walk together. I understand uncertainty and pain, although I know they have no meaning in Reality. Yet an awakener must remain with those they teach and lead, perceiving what they perceive, but still retaining in their mind the Way that also led them out of sleep, and now will lead you out, with your Guide.

The Divine’s Children in their fitful dreams will continue to believe in fear and conflict until they walk along the Way to their holy Self. Let us walk together to hasten the journey’s End. Resurrection comes again each time a brother or sister is safely led to the Place at which the journey ends and is forgot. Every mind is renewed each time a brother or sister learns there is a way out of misery and pain. Everyone is born anew each time a brother’s or sister’s mind turns to the Light in them, and walks together with their sisters and brothers and with me. I have remembered everyone. Help me now to lead you back to where the journey into fear was begun, to make another choice with me.

Release me as you practice once again the Thoughts I have brought to you from Holy Spirit, Who sees your urgent need, and knows the Answer the Divine has given It to give to you. Together we review these Thoughts. Together we devote our time and effort to Them. And together we will teach Them to our sisters and brothers. The Divine would not have Heaven incomplete. It waits for you as I do. My part is incomplete without your part with me. And as we are made whole, we go together to our ancient Home, prepared for us before time was, and kept unchanged by time, immaculate and safe, as It will be at last when time is done.

Let this review be then your gift to me. For this alone I need to help you as I would: that you will hear the Words given you, and make them your own by giving them to the world. You are the eyes, the voice, the hands, the feet, through which Divine Essence awakens the world. The Self from Which I call to you is simply your own. To It we go together. Take your sisters and brothers’ hands, for this Way must be walked together. In them I walk with you and you with me. Our Creator wills Its Children be One with It. Everything that has Being must therefore be One with you.

Let this review become a time in which we share a new experience for you, yet one as old as time, and older still. Holy is our true Nature and Name, the Glory we share with our Creator undefiled forever, and our Wholeness now complete, as the Divine established It. You are Its Child, completing Its Extension in your own. We practice only an ancient Truth we knew before illusion seemed to claim the world. And we remind the world that it is free of all illusions every time we say,

 

“The Divine is perfect Love, and therefore so am I.”

 

With this we start each day of our review. With this we start and end each period of practice. And with this Thought we enter sleep, to waken once again with these same words upon our lips to greet another day. Every lesson that we review we surround with this Thought, and use the lessons to hold It up before our minds, and keep It clear in our remembrance throughout the day. And thus when we have finished this review, we will know that the words we speak are true.

Yet are the words simply aids, stated at the beginning and the end of practice periods, and then to be used only to recall the mind, as needed, to its purpose. We place faith in the experience that comes from practice, not the means we use. We wait for the experience, and recognize that it is only here that confidence resides. We use the words, and try and try again to go beyond them to their Meaning, which is far beyond their sound. The sound grows dim and disappears as we approach the Source of Meaning. It is here that we find Rest.

 

Review Lessons 151 and 152

The Divine is perfect Love, and therefore so am I.

Lesson 151. The truth in all things is a Resonance of the Harmony of Heaven.

Lesson 152. The power of the decision of attention and perspective is my own.

The Divine is perfect Love, and therefore so am I.

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 15: Dissolving Dissociation

 

7. Bringing Guilt and Guiltlessness Together

The journey we undertake together is the receiving of Light in place of dark, and of Understanding in place of ignorance. Nothing you truly understand can be fearful. If it is real it will bring you Joy when you understand it, and if it is unreal it will disappear in the Light of Understanding. It is only in darkness and in ignorance that something may seem frightening, and then recoiled from into further darkness. Only the hidden can terrify, not for what it is, but only for what you imagine it might be. The obscure can be frightening because you do not understand its Meaning and feel the need to provide it with your own. When you do understand something’s Meaning, the obscure becomes clear and is no longer frightening.

Value is always found in shared Appreciation. Therefore nothing’s Value is hidden, for what is hidden cannot be shared. Likewise, what is concealed cannot be loved because it cannot be known. But everything is known, so Love encompasses all things.

The quiet Light in which the Holy Spirit dwells within you is merely perfect Openness, in which nothing is hidden, and therefore nothing is feared. Fear in all its forms will always yield to Love if it is brought to Love, not hidden from It. There is no darkness that the Light of Love will not dispel, unless darkness is concealed from Love’s Beneficence. What is kept apart from Love cannot share Love’s healing Power, not because Love’s Power to heal is lacking, but because the thing has been separated off and kept in darkness. For Love must wait until It is welcomed. Until you invite and welcome Love, the sentinels of darkness carefully watch over what you would keep hidden, and you who made these guardians of illusion out of nothing are now afraid of them.

Would you continue to give imagined power to these strange ideas of safety? They are neither safe nor unsafe. They do not protect, neither do they attack. They do nothing at all, being nothing at all. As guardians of darkness and of ignorance, they can be turned to only for fear, for what they keep obscure is fearful to you. Just let them go, and what was fearful will be so no longer. Without protection of obscurity, only the Light of Love remains, for only this has Meaning, and can live in Light. Everything else must disappear.

Death yields to Life simply because destruction is not true and therefore has no being. The Light of Innocence shines guilt away because when they are brought together, the Truth of one must make the falsity of Its opposite perfectly clear. Keep not guilt and Guiltlessness apart, for this will make you believe that you can have them both, and this belief is meaningless. All you have done by keeping them apart is to lose their meaning by confusing them with each other. And so you do not realize that only one means anything, and the other is entirely without sense of any kind.

You have interpreted the separation as a means you made for breaking your Communication with your Creator. The Holy Spirit reinterprets the separation as a means of reestablishing what has not been broken, but has been made obscure. All things you made have use to Spirit for Its most holy Purpose. It knows you are not separate from the Divine, and It understands all that is in your mind that causes you to think that you are. All this, and nothing else, would It separate from you and release you from. The power of free will, of the decision of where to place your attention and how to frame your perspective, which you made in place of the Power of Freedom and Creation, Spirit would teach you how to use on your behalf. You who made it to hurt yourself must learn of Spirit how to apply it to the holy cause of awakening.

You who have taught yourself to communicate in dark and obscure symbols do not understand the language you have made. It has no meaning, for its purpose is not communication, but rather the disruption of communication. If the purpose of language is communication leading to shared meaning, how can this tongue mean anything? Yet even this strange and twisted effort to communicate through not communicating holds enough of Love to make it meaningful, if its interpreter is not its maker. You who made it are only expressing conflict, from which the Holy Spirit would release you. Leave what you would communicate to Spirit. It will interpret it to you with perfect Clarity, for It knows with Whom you are in perfect Communication.

You know not the meaning you are communicating in the foreign tongue you have made, and so you know not what is being communicated to you. But your Interpreter perceives the Meaning in all languages and communications. It will not attempt to communicate the meaningless. It will separate out all that has Meaning, dropping off all the rest, and offering your true Communication to those who would communicate as truly with you. You have been attempting to speak two languages simultaneously, and this must lead to unintelligibility. But if one means nothing and the other Everything, only the latter is possible for purposes of Communication. The other only interferes with It.

True Communication and Meaning are entirely the Holy Spirit’s Function. It therefore must remove whatever interferes with Communication and Meaning, in order to restore Them. Therefore, keep no source of interference from Its Sight, for It will not attack your dark sentinels. Just bring them to Spirit, and let Its Gentleness teach you that, in the Light, they are not fearful, and cannot serve to guard the dark doors behind which nothing at all is carefully concealed. We must open all doors to let the Light come streaming through. There are no hidden chambers in the Divine’s Temple. Its Gates are open wide to greet Its Children. Everyone must succeed in coming where the Divine has called them, as soon as they themself open the door to their Creator’s Welcome.