ARCIM

Daily Lesson 26 ~
January 26

The reality of my thoughts determines my connection with my Invulnerability.

Your Invulnerability was a Gift from your Creator and is therefore Eternal. Nothing can ever threaten It. It is the Guarantee of your Perfection in the Likeness of your Creator. It is present now. But while you believe yourself to be outside of your Invulnerability, It waits, extending or undoing all your thoughts after their kind. Your loving, gentle, and healing thoughts love your Invulnerability, and being real are thus extended as they bless the world. They allow you and everyone else connection to your Invulnerability. Your fear thoughts disrupt connection to your Invulnerability from your awareness, and your attack thoughts attempt to attack your Invulnerability, and are thus undone.

It is surely obvious that if you could actually be threatened then you would not be invulnerable. Because the world you perceive is a reflection of the state of your inner health, if you believe that anything can threaten or harm you, this is because you believe that you can really threaten or harm. And what would have effects through you must also have effects on you. It is this law that will ultimately bless you. But you are misusing it now. You must therefore learn how it can be used for your own best interests, rather than against them.

Because your thoughts will always be projected or mis-projected, if you have fear thoughts then you will fear threat. And if you fear threat, then you must believe that you are not invulnerable. Fear thoughts therefore make you vulnerable in your own mind, which is where the fear thoughts are. Fear thoughts and Invulnerability cannot be accepted together. They contradict each other.

The idea for today introduces the thought that you always fear yourself first. If fear thoughts (any thought that doesn’t bring peace) must entail the belief that you are vulnerable, their effect is to weaken you in your own eyes. Thus they have threatened your perception of yourself, or your self-image. And if you believe that fear thoughts serve a purpose, i.e., if you hold them in your mind, then you can no longer believe in yourself. A false image of yourself then comes to take the place of what you are. That false image is the ego.

Practice with today’s idea will help you to understand that the experience of vulnerability and Invulnerability are both the result of your own thoughts. Nothing except your thoughts can make you think you are vulnerable. Nothing except your thoughts can then threaten you. And nothing except your real Thoughts can prove to you that neither vulnerability nor threat is true.

Six practice periods are required in applying today’s idea. A full two minutes should be attempted for each of them, although the time may be reduced to a minute if the discomfort is too great. Do not reduce it further.

Each practice period should begin with repeating the idea for today, then closing your eyes and reviewing any situations whose unresolved outcomes are causing you concern (fear). The concern may take the form of preoccupation, a sense of imposition, foreboding, worry, anxiety, anger, depression, trauma, or even panic. Any problem as yet unsettled, that is, that you are not at peace with, that tends to recur in your thoughts is a suitable subject. You will not be able to use very many such problems for one practice period, because a longer time than usual should be spent with each one.

Today’s idea should be applied as follows: First, name the problem as you perceive it:

“I am concerned about _____.”

Then go over every possible outcome that occurs to you or has occurred to you in connection with the unresolved situation and that is causing you concern, referring to each one quite specifically, saying:

“I am worried (anxious, afraid, etc.) that _____ (whatever you are concerned might happen that you believe would be a form of disaster).”

After naming the problem and the outcomes connected with it of which you are concerned, tell yourself:

“These fear thoughts are disrupting my connection with my Invulnerability.”

If you are doing the exercises properly, you will probably be able to identify several distressing possibilities available for each problem you identify. It is much more helpful to cover a few situations thoroughly than to touch superficially on a larger number of different situations causing you concern.

As the list of distressing outcomes for each situation continues, you will probably find some of them less plausible to you, especially those that occur to you toward the end of the practice period. Try, however, to treat them all alike to whatever extent you can.

Conclude each practice period by repeating today’s idea once more.

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Principle of Miracles 26

Miracles are part of an interlocking Circle of Forgiveness. When this Circle becomes complete then the Atonement will be fulfilled in time. The Process of Atonement works all the time and in all the dimensions of time.

Commentary

Each miracle allows the true Correction of diverse, seemingly unrelated, lacks of Love that have become chains of unforgiveness, some of them stretching backward or forward into distant dimensions of time. Through this Correction the links that bind these chains are broken, the time that their individual corrections would have required is saved, and the attention that was trapped in these chains is released, allowing it to be reformed as part of the interlocking Circle of Forgiveness that is the Atonement.

I am in charge of the Process of Atonement, which I undertook to set It into motion in time. My part in the Atonement is for the undoing of all mistakes or lacks of Love that my sisters and brothers could not otherwise miraculously correct themselves. That is what is meant by the ”everlasting arms” in the biblical statement, “The eternal God is your place of refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”

However, it is perfectly clear that whenever lacks of Love in whatever form can be corrected through miracles, both giver and receiver become involved in undoing or atoning. (Note that the word “atone” really means “undo,” i.e., the undoing of mistakes or lacks of Love.) In this sense it is better to atone through miracles because of the mutual benefits involved through cooperation with your sisters and brothers in the miracle. Allowing miracles to be performed through you thus helps both you and your sisters and brothers to complete your parts in the Atonement more quickly.

In this light, my statement, “Whatever you do to any of my sisters and brothers you do to me,” really should conclude with the words: “. . . you do to yourself and me.” The reason the miracles you allow to be performed through you come before or prior to my undoing or cancellation of mistakes is because I do not need miracles for my own Atonement, while you do. But I stand “at the end” of each miracle situation in support of all my sisters and brothers, in case those invited to perform a miracle fail temporarily to do so.

Lacks of Love are simply mistakes and are easily corrected once recognized. Mistakes should never be confused or associated with flaw or “sin.” Sin is a made-up word and a concept full of threat connotations constructed by fearful minds. No real threat exists anywhere. Just because nature abhors a vacuum it does not follow that a vacuum is filled with hellfire. Nothing is gained by frightening yourself, and to do so will only reinforce your belief in threat. Freedom from fear is required to perform miracles. Part of their Atonement value involves just that.

This Course will place increasing emphasis on atoning or undoing, since acquiring new learning patterns requires undoing and letting go of old ones. The memory of something current causing the memory of something past to become altered (known as “retroactive inhibition” in psychology) in this case simply means that when two opposite kinds of learning – past and present, old and new – coexist, they interfere with each other. Therefore, if you say to someone you care about: “If you want me to I will . . .” (e.g., “. . . allow new learning to take place in the present”), please add, “. . . and if you don’t want me to I won’t . . .” (e.g., “. . . engage in old learning from the past”). This is a right use of inhibition. It also applies to the principle of devoting each day to allowing whatever miracles are asked of you that day to be performed through you.

There has to be some control over learning for it to be focused on purposes. Sometimes new learning is more important than the familiar that is held dear, and has to take precedence over old learning, even if the new learning is experienced as inhibiting the old learning. The new taking precedence over and replacing the old in this regard is a form of correction. Everything that results in lacks of Love is the result of inferior learning. If these lacks have been overlearned, they may have become very stable. Miracles are a way of undoing overlearned patterns of lacks of Love. They bring Light into darkness. That is where their Atonement value resides.