ARCIM

Daily Lesson 182 ~
July 1

I will be still a Holy Instant and go Home.

This world you seem to live in is not home to you. And somewhere in your mind you know that this is true. A Memory of your true Home keeps beckoning you, as if there were a Place that sought your return although you do not remember where, nor what the Memory is of. Yet still you feel a stranger here, from somewhere inside yourself all unknown to you. Nothing so definite that you could say with certainty that you are in exile here. Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not more than a tiny throb, at other times hardly remembered, actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind and heart again.

Everyone knows this experience. Yet some try to put by their longing for their true Home in games they play to occupy their time and keep their sadness from them. Others will deny that they are sad, and do not recognize their tears at all. Still others will maintain that this feeling is illusion, not to be considered more than as a dream. Yet who in simple honesty, without defensiveness and self-deception, would deny they understand the experience of which we speak?

We speak today for everyone who walks this world, for no one here is at home. Each goes uncertainly about in endless search, seeking in darkness what they cannot find, not recognizing what it is they seek. A thousand homes they make, yet none contents their restless mind. They do not understand that they attempt in vain to find or build their home here. The home they seek cannot be made by them. There is no substitute for Heaven. All they ever made was some form of the sad dream of separation.

Perhaps you think it is your childhood home that you would find again. The childhood of your body and its place of shelter are a memory now so distorted that you merely hold an image of a past that never happened in truth. Yet there is a Child in you who knows It is a wanderer here, and seeks Its Creator’s House. The Innocence and Truth of this Child is eternal.

Wherever this Child is is holy ground. It is Its Holiness that lights up Heaven, and that brings to Earth the pure Reflection of the Light beyond, wherein are Earth and Heaven joined as One. It is this Child in you your Creator knows as Its Own Child. It is this Child Who knows Its Creator.

This Child desires to go Home so deeply, so unceasingly, Its Voice cries unto you to let It rest a while. It does not ask for more than just a few instants of respite; just an interval in which It can return to breathe again the holy Air that fills Its Creator’s House. You are this Child’s Home as well, and It will return to you. Just give It a little time to be Itself within the Peace that is Its Home, resting in Silence and Peace and Love.

This Child needs your protection. It is far from Its eternal Home. It is so little that It seems so easily shut out, Its tiny Voice so readily obscured, Its calls for help almost unheard amid the grating sounds and harsh and rasping noises of the world. Yet does It know that in you still abides Its sure Protection. You will fail It not. It will go Home, and you along with It.

This Child is your Innocence and Defenselessness and your Strength. It trusts in you. It came to you because It knew you would not fail. It sings softly and unceasingly of Its Home to you. For It would bring you to your true Home with It, that you reside there in your Totality, and not return again where you don’t belong and where you are a wanderer in a world of strange thoughts. Its Patience has no limits. It will wait until you hear Its gentle Voice within you, calling you to let It go in Peace, along with you, to where It is at home, and you with It.

When you are still even just an Instant, when the world recedes from you, when valueless ideas cease to have value in your restless mind, then will you hear this Child’s Voice, Which becomes the Voice of the Divine. So poignantly It calls to you that you will no longer resist It. In that Instant It will take you to your true Home, and you will stay with It in perfect Stillness, silent and at peace, beyond all words, untouched by fear and doubt, sublimely certain that you are at home.

Rest with It frequently today. For It has become as a little Child that you might learn of It how strong are they who let all defenses go, offering only Love’s Messages to those who have not yet allowed themselves to hear this Child’s Song. It holds the Might of Heaven in Its Hand and calls everyone friend, and gives Its Strength to them that they may see It would be Friend to them. It asks that they protect It, for Its Home is far away, and It will not return to It alone.

Divine Essence is born anew as a little Child each time a wanderer would go Home. For each must learn that what they would protect is only this Child, who comes defenseless and who is protected by Defenselessness. From time to time today go with It to your Home, for you are as much a stranger here as It.

Take time today to lay aside your shields that offer you nothing, and lay down the weapon you raised against an enemy without existence. Divine Essence has called you Friend. It has even come to you to ask your help in letting It go Home, completed and completely. It has come as does a little child who must beseech their parent for protection and for love. This Child cocreates the Universe with Its Creator, and yet It beckons you unceasingly to return Home with It, releasing yourself from all illusions that merely keep you in forgetfulness.

You cannot lose your Innocence or the Truth. It is for These you yearn. These are your heart’s desire. This is the Voice you hear, and this the Call that cannot be denied. The holy Child remains with you. Its Home is yours. Today It gives you Its Defenselessness, and you accept It in exchange for all the toys of conflict you have made. And now the Way is open, and the journey has an end in sight at last. Be still a moment and go Home with It and be at peace awhile.

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 16: The Holy Instant

 

7. The Ego’s Special Love Relationship

Beyond the poor attraction of the special love relationship, and always obscured by it, is the powerful attraction of the Creator for Its Children, and Its Children for It. There is no other love that can satisfy you, because there is no other Love. This is the only Love that is fully given and fully returned. Being complete, It asks nothing. Being wholly pure, everyone joined in It has Everything. And everyone is joined in It, eternally.

This is not the basis for any “love” relationship in which the ego enters. For every relationship on which the ego embarks has to be special in the ego’s perception. The ego establishes relationships only to get something. And the ego would keep the giver bound to itself through guilt.

It is impossible for the ego to enter into any relationship without anger, for the ego believes that anger makes allies. This is not its statement, but it is its purpose. For the ego really believes that it can only get, and keep for itself, by making guilty. This is the one thing that attracts it. This is an attraction so weak that it would have no hold at all except for those who don’t recognize it. For the ego always seems to attract through love, and has no attraction at all to anyone who perceives that it only attracts through guilt.

The sick attraction of guilt must be recognized for what it is. For having been made real in your belief, it is essential to perceive it clearly, and, by withdrawing your investment in it, to learn to let it go. No one would choose to let go what they believe has value greater than its cost. Yet the attraction of guilt has value to you only because in the obscurity of illusions you have not seen what it is, and have then judged it as valuable. As we bring it to Light, your only question will be why you ever found it attractive. You have nothing to lose by examining this clearly, for ugliness such as this belongs not in your holy mind. The Host to the Divine can have no real investment here.

This Course said before that the ego attempts to maintain and increase guilt, but in such a way that you do not recognize what it would do to you. For it is the ego’s fundamental doctrine that what you do to others, you have escaped. The ego wishes no one well. But its survival depends on your belief that you are exempt from its malicious intentions. It counsels, therefore, that if you are host to it, it will enable you to direct outward the anger that it holds, thus protecting you. And thus it embarks on an endless, unrewarding chain of special relationships, forged out of anger and guilt, and dedicated only to one insane belief: that the more anger you invest outside yourself, the safer you become.

It is this chain that binds the Children of the Divine to guilt, and it is this chain the Holy Spirit will remove from their holy mind. For the chain of savagery belongs not around the chosen Host to the Divine, who cannot in reality make themselves host to the ego. In the name of their Release, and in the Name of Spirit Who would release them, let us observe more closely the relationships that the ego contrives, and let the Holy Spirit evaluate them truly. For it is certain that if you perceive them clearly, you will offer them gladly to Spirit to transform. What Spirit can make of them you do not know, but you will become willing to find out if you are willing, first, to perceive what you have made of them.

In one way or another, every relationship that the ego makes is based on the idea that by sacrificing itself, it becomes bigger. This “sacrifice,” which the ego regards as purification, is actually the root of its bitter resentment. For it would much prefer to attack directly, and avoid delaying what it really wants. Yet the ego acknowledges “reality” as it perceives it, and recognizes that no one could interpret direct attack as love. Yet to make guilty is to directly attack, though it does not seem to be. For the guilty expect attack, and having asked for it, they are attracted to it.

In the ego’s mad relationships, the attraction of what you do not want seems to be much stronger than the attraction of what you do want. For each participant in these relationships thinks that they have sacrificed something to the other, and the ego has taught them to resent the other for this perceived affront. Yet this sacrifice is what each thinks they want. The participants in ego relationships are not in love with each other at all. They merely believe that they are in love with the idea of sacrificing themselves for the other. And for this sacrifice, which each one demands of themself, each demands the other accept the guilt, and sacrifice themself as well. Forgiveness is perceived to be impossible, for the ego believes that to forgive another is to “lose” them. For it is only by resentment without forgiveness that the ego can ensure the continuance of the guilt that holds all its relationships together.

Yet the participants in the ego’s relationships only seem to be together. For relationships to the ego mean only that bodies are together. It is always physical closeness that the ego demands, and it does not care where the mind goes or what it thinks during physical closeness, for to the ego this is unimportant. For as long as the body is there to receive the sacrifice, the ego is content. To the ego the mind is private, and only the body can be shared. Ideas are basically of no concern, except as they draw the body of another closer or push it away. And it is in these terms that the ego judges ideas as “good” or “bad.” What makes another guilty, and holds them in a relationship through guilt, is “good” to the ego. What releases another from guilt is “bad,” because such a person would no longer believe that bodies themselves communicate, and so they would be lost from the relationship, and “gone.”

Sacrifice and suffering, anger and guilt are the “gifts” with which the ego would “bless” all relationships it touches. And those who are gathered at its altar accept sacrifice and suffering as the price of relationship. In their angry alliances, born of the fear of loneliness, and yet dedicated to the continuance of loneliness, they seek relief from guilt by increasing it in the other. For they believe that this decreases it in them. The other seems always to be attacking and wounding them, perhaps in little ways, perhaps “unconsciously,” yet never without demand of sacrifice. The deep fury of those gathered at the ego’s altar far exceeds your awareness of it. For you do not realize what the ego really wants.

Whenever you are angry in a relationship intended to express love you can be sure that you have formed a special relationship that the ego has “blessed,” for anger is the ego’s “blessing.” Anger takes many forms, but it cannot long deceive those who will learn that Love brings no guilt at all, and what brings guilt cannot be Love, and must be anger. All anger is nothing more than an attempt to make someone feel guilty, and this attempt is the only basis that the ego accepts for special relationships. Guilt is the only need the ego has, and as long as you identify with the ego, guilt will remain attractive to you.

Just remember this: to be with a body is not true Communication. And if you think it is, you will feel guilty about communication, and will be afraid to hear the Holy Spirit and to recognize in Its Voice your own need to truly communicate. The Holy Spirit cannot teach through fear. And how can It communicate with you while you believe that to communicate is to make yourself alone? It is clearly nonsensical to believe that by communicating you will be abandoned. And yet you do believe it as long as you accept the ego’s version of relationships. For you will think that your mind must be kept private or you will lose the relationship, and that if your bodies are together, your mind remains your own.

The union of bodies thus becomes the way in which the ego would keep minds apart. For bodies cannot forgive, just as they cannot will. They can do only as the mind directs. And thus, under Spirit’s Guidance, bodies can be a means of communication while minds believe themselves to be in this world.

The illusion of the autonomy of the body, and its ability to overcome loneliness, is merely the working of the ego’s plan to establish its own autonomy. As long as you believe that to be with a body is companionship, you will be compelled to attempt to keep your sisters and brothers in their bodies, held there by guilt. And you will perceive danger in communication, and safety in guilt. For the ego will always teach that loneliness is solved by guilt, and that communication is the cause of loneliness. And despite the evident madness of this lesson, you have learned it.

Forgiveness is found in true Communication as surely as the belief in condemnation lies in guilt. It is the Holy Spirit’s Teaching Function to instruct those who believe that communication is the cause of loneliness that true Communication is awakening. And It will do so, for the Power of the Divine in It and in you is joined in real Relationship, so holy and so strong that It can overcome even the ego’s insanity without fear. It is through the Holy Instant that what seems impossible is accomplished, making it evident that it was not impossible. In the Holy Instant guilt holds no attraction, since true Communication has been restored. And guilt, whose only purpose is to disrupt communication, has no function here.

In the Holy Instant there is no concealment and no private thoughts. The willingness to communicate attracts true Communication to It, and overcomes loneliness completely. There is complete forgiveness here, for there is no desire to exclude anyone from your Completion, in spontaneous recognition of the Value of their Part in It. In the Protection of your Wholeness all are invited and made welcome. And you understand that your Completion is the Divine’s, Whose only need is to have you be complete. For your Completion makes you the Divine’s Completion in your awareness. And here it is that you experience yourself as you were created, and as you are.