ARCIM

Daily Lesson 70 ~
March 11

My awakening comes from within.

All “temptation” is nothing more than some form of the basic compulsion not to believe the idea for today. Awakening and the healing that it brings seem to come from anywhere except from you. So, too, does the source of guilt. You perceive neither guilt nor awakening as in your own mind, and nowhere else. When you realize that all guilt is solely an invention of your mind, you must also realize that guilt and its cure – awakening – must be in the same place. In understanding this, you are released from guilt.

The seeming “cost” of accepting today’s idea is this: It means that nothing outside yourself can awaken or save you, and that nothing outside yourself can give you Peace. But it also means that nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your Peace, or upset you in any way. Today’s idea places you in charge of the universe, where you belong because of who you are.

Being in charge of your universe is not a role that you can partially accept, and you must surely begin to see that accepting it is awakening. It may not, however, be clear to you why the recognition that guilt is in your own mind and only there entails the realization that awakening is there as well. Spirit would not have put the Remedy for sickness where It cannot help. That is the way your mind under the ego’s influence has worked, but hardly how the Divine’s Mind works.

The Divine wants you to be healed, and so It has placed the Source of healing where the need for healing is. You have tried to do just the opposite, making every attempt, however distorted and fantastic it might be, to separate healing from the sickness for which it was intended, and thus keep the sickness. The purpose of this madness was to ensure that healing did not occur. The Divine’s Purpose is to ensure that it does.

Today we will practice realizing that the Divine’s Will and ours are really the same in this. The Divine wants us to be healed, and we do not really want to be sick because it makes us unhappy. Therefore, in accepting the idea for today, we agree with the Divine. It does not want us to be sick. Neither do we. It wants us to be healed. So do we.

We are ready for two longer practice periods today, each of which should last some ten to fifteen minutes. It will, however, still be up to you to decide when to undertake them. We will follow this practice for a number of lessons, and it would again be well to decide in advance when would be a good time to set aside for each of the two longer practice periods, and to adhere to your own decision as closely as possible.

Begin these practice periods by repeating the idea for today, adding a statement signifying your recognition that awakening comes from nothing outside of you. You might put it this way:

“My awakening comes from within. It cannot come from anywhere else, because I am the one who awakens.”

Then, with your eyes closed, devote a few minutes to reviewing some of the external places where in the past you have looked for healing, for awakening, and for “salvation:” in other people, in possessions, in various situations and events, and in self-images that you sought to make real. Recognize that what you sought was not there. At the end of this period of mind searching, tell yourself:

“My awakening cannot come from any of these things. My awakening comes from within, and only from within.”

Now we will try again to reach the Light in you, which is where your awakening is. You cannot find it in the clouds that surround the Light, and it is in them you have been looking for it. It is not there. It is past the clouds and in the Light beyond, within. Remember that you will have to go through the clouds before you can reach the Light they conceal. But remember also that you have never found anything that you really wanted, or that endured, in the cloud patterns you imagined.

Since all illusions of awakening and of being saved have failed you, surely you do not want to remain in the clouds looking vainly for idols there, when you could so easily move through the clouds and into the Light of real awakening. Try to pass through the clouds by whatever means appeals to you. If it helps you, think of me holding your hand and leading you. And I assure you that this will be no idle fantasy.

For the short and frequent practice periods today, remind yourself that your awakening comes from within you, and that nothing but your own thoughts can impact your progress. You are free from all external interference. You are in charge of your awakening, which means that you are in charge of the awakening of the world you live in. Say, then:

“My awakening comes from within. Nothing outside of me can impact my progress. Within me is the world’s awakening and my own.”

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 4: Discerning the Ego’s Terrain

 

1. The Last Foolish Journey

They who embrace their true function here and work diligently to fulfill it are both wise and devoted—two words that are perfectly interchangeable in the sense that they truly bring on the exchange of one another. I once said that you should go with a brother or sister twice as far as they ask you to go. This obviously doesn’t suggest that your service hinder them or set them back on their journey home. Right devotion to a brother or sister cannot set you back either. It can only lead to mutual progress. The result of genuine devotion is inspiration, a word which, properly understood, is the opposite of fatigue. To be fatigued is to be dis-spirited, but to be in-spired is to be in the spirit. To be egocentric is also to be dispirited. But to be Self-centered in the right sense is to be inspired, or in Spirit. The truly inspired are enlightened and cannot abide in darkness.

The Divine created you in Light. This is a unique creation that only the Creator holds the right for. Do not attempt to break the Divine’s “copyright” of your true Self by allowing a shabby copy to replace it, because the Creator’s Authorship alone can set things right, that is, restore them to their perfect State. Your own right authorship does not take place in remaking copies of things created, but only in creating like the Creator.

Embarrassment is always an expression of egocentricity, an association that can be noticed if paid attention to. You cannot, for instance, be embarrassed by your own words if you have turned those words over to Spirit or me, unless you believe that you are then responsible for them. Everyone is free to allocate the authorship for their thoughts as they elect. They can speak from their spirit or from their ego exactly as they choose. If they choose to speak from their spirit, then they have chosen to “Be still and know that I am the Divine.” These words are inspired, because they come from Knowledge. If a person speaks from their ego, they are disclaiming Knowledge instead of affirming It, and are thus dis-spiriting themself.

The dis-spirited have no choice but to be narcissistic, and to be narcissistic is to place your faith in the unworthy. Your real Worth is your divine Source, or Authorship, and your spirit is Its Acknowledgment. I cannot guide your mind away from ego except as you bring it into association with your spirit, where the ego’s nothingness will be seen and in this seeing where it will disappear. Attacking misidentification errors is neither my function nor yours. As discussed previously, destroying the “devil” or “Satan” is a meaningless undertaking because the devil and Satan are only a concept, a myth.

Cervantes wrote a brilliant symbolic account of this undertaking, though he did not understand his own symbolism. The real point of this account was that the “hero” of the story, Don Quixote, was a man who perceived himself as unworthy because he identified with his ego and perceived its weakness. He then set about to alter his perception, not by correcting his misidentification, but by behaving egotistically and further inflating his ego in hopes that this would make him feel more worthy. Chesterton wrote an excellent description of Cervantes’s perception of his “unheroic hero:”

“And he observes across a weary land a straggling road in Spain, up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain.”

This captures a view of the human being that the ego embraces all too frequently, but the spirit never tolerates because it knows it is a lie.

Do not embark on foolish journeys because they are indeed in vain. The ego may desire them because the ego is both lean and foolish. But the spirit cannot embark on them because it is forever unwilling to depart from its true Foundation.

My journey to “the cross” of the crucifixion should be the last foolish journey, or meaningless excursion of the ego, for every mind. I undertook the crucifixion to end the need for all meaningless journeys. Do not dwell upon the crucifixion, but simply dismiss it as accomplished. If you can accept that incident as the replacement for your own last foolish journey, you are free also to join the Resurrection.

Human living has indeed been needlessly wasted in the compulsion of repetition. It reenacts the separation, the loss of power, the foolish journey of the ego in its attempt at reparation, and finally the crucifixion of the body, or death. Repetition compulsions can be endless unless they are given up by an act of will, or, more properly, through active creation. Do not make the pathetic human error of repetitively “clinging to the old rugged cross.” The only true message of the crucifixion is in respect to every person’s ability to overcome the cross of believing themself bound to a body. Unless and until they do so, they will continue to crucify themself over and over. But this was not the good news that I intended to offer anyone. We have another journey to undertake, and as you master this Course you are undertaking it.