IV: The Only Answer 7-12
7. In the Kingdom, where you are and what you are is perfectly certain. There is no doubt, because the first question was never asked. Having finally been wholly answered, it has never been. Being, alone lives in the Kingdom, where everything lives in God without question. The time spent on questioning in the dream has given way to creation and to its eternity. You are as certain as God because you are as true as He is, but what was once certain in your mind has become only the ability for certainty.
8. The introduction of abilities into being was the beginning of uncertainty, because abilities are potentials, not accomplishments. Your abilities are useless in the presence of God’s accomplishments, and also of yours. Accomplishments are results that have been achieved. When they are perfect, abilities are meaningless. It is curious that the perfect must now be perfected. In fact, it is impossible. Remember, however, that when you put yourself in an impossible situation you believe that the impossible is possible.
9. Abilities must be developed before you can use them. This is not true of anything that God created, but it is the kind of solution possible for what you made. In an impossible situation, you can develop your abilities to the point where they can get you out of it. You have a guide to how to develop them, but you have no commander except yourself. This leaves you in charge of the Kingdom, with both a guide to find it and a means to keep it. You have a model to follow who will strengthen your command, and never detract from it in any way. You therefore retain the central place in your imagined enslavement, which in itself demonstrates that you are not enslaved.
10. You are in an impossible situation only because you think it is possible to be in one. You would be in an impossible situation if God showed you your perfection and proved to you that you were wrong. This would demonstrate that the perfect are inadequate to bring themselves to the awareness of their perfection, and thus side with the belief that those who have everything need help and are therefore helpless. This is the kind of reasoning in which the ego engages. God, who knows that His creations are perfect, does not affront them. This would be as impossible as the ego’s notion that it has affronted him.
11. That is why the Holy Spirit never commands. To command is to assume inequality, which the Holy Spirit demonstrates does not exist. Fidelity to premises is a law of mind, and everything God created is faithful to His laws. Fidelity to other laws is also possible, however, not because the laws are true, but because you made them. What would be gained if God proved to you that you have thought insanely? Can God lose His Own certainty? I have frequently said that what you teach you are. Would you have God teach you that you have sinned? If He confronted the self you made with the truth He created for you, what could you be but afraid? You would doubt your right mind, which is the only place where you can find the sanity He gave you.
12. God does not teach. To teach is to imply a lack, which God knows is not there. God is not conflicted. Teaching aims at change, but God created only the changeless. The separation was not a loss of perfection, but a failure in communication. A harsh and strident form of communication arose as the ego’s voice. It could not shatter the peace of God, but it could shatter yours. God did not blot it out, because to eradicate it would be to attack it. Being questioned, He did not question. He merely gave the Answer. His Answer is your teacher. [1]
As we conclude “The Only Answer” today, Jesus assures us that in the Kingdom of God, our identity never changed. There is no room for lies, for doubt, for uncertainty, and questions in God’s Kingdom because our Sonship is forever. This is our true state of Being. This other thing that goes on in the world gives way to Creation and to its eternity.
When God creates something, nothing must be developed because God creates wholeness; He shares Himself with what He creates. However, we fabricated another creation in which the perfect Creation of God has been shattered, been rejected by its Maker, barred from the Kingdom and now must return to the place in which we never really left except in our dreams. In this impossible dream, our abilities can be developed to the point in which we realize it is a dream, we awaken, and we are reborn into the perfection in which we never really lost.
We are put in charge of our awakening with Holy Spirit as our guide. Jesus emphasizes that we are not put under the control of Holy Spirit but are in charge of our own awakening. God does not enslave us. Holy Spirit does not come over us and make us do things that we have no control over. Holy Spirit is our guide to salvation. To follow the Voice for God is always our choice and it can never be a flippant choice for if we follow the Voice for God we must be quiet, we must be at peace, we must be in a meditative or contemplative state to hear His Voice. He does not shout at us, scold us, condemn or judge against us. He is always for us. If we make a mistake, Holy Spirit shows us the way to correction.
Just as Holy Spirit is our guide, Jesus is our model to follow. Jesus strengthens our command and does not take it away. Jesus does not seek to control us, take over our minds against our wills, or do anything but restore us to God’s Kingdom. There is no mind control involved in our awakening, in our salvation, in our return to God. We are always in control for this is the way God created us to be.
The only reason we are in this impossible situation is because we believe it is possible to be separate from God. We believe that we can set up an alternate kingdom. We believe that what God created perfect can be made imperfect. Jesus tells us that God does not show us our perfection to prove that we are wrong – this is our own responsibility for we are not created helpless and we are quite capable of bringing ourselves to awakening.
In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the Father did not chase his son down and force him to come home. He did not go into the dens of iniquity and remind his son of what a good family he came from and how he did not belong with the kind of people he was hanging out with. He did not follow him into darkness or hire private detectives to follow him around and report back about the whereabouts and the particular activities in which the son was engaged. The Father trusted that the son would come to his senses on his own steam. The Father trusted that the part of Him that was inside the son would remind the son who he was and where he belonged.
Jesus tells us that chasing after people, confronting, scolding, shaking them awake, and forcing the gospel down their throats is the kind of reasoning in which the ego engages. God does not affront His Creations, because He is incapable of being affronted.
If Holy Spirit pushed to the front, bossed us around, or pushed us aside to take charge of us, this could only mean that God’s eternal laws of equality were broken. Holy Spirit is never threatened by our humanity or feels better than us. He is not our overlord; nor are we His underlings. We should never use language that would indicate that Holy Spirit is not respectful of us or would force Himself upon us or anybody else. We must never think we can “sic” Holy Spirit upon another person as if the Voice for God is a hound from heaven. While this viewpoint will never hurt Holy Spirit, this viewpoint will hurt us if we think that Holy Spirit is our own personal attack dog. This would indicate that we have Holy Spirit mixed up with the ego who follows a completely different set of laws which do not work, which are untrue, and will lead us into an egotistical, harmful walk with God that will corrupt our inner altar and mar our testimony of Christ.
God is Love and Certainty. He trusts in us to wake up in our own perfect timing and find our way home to him. He will never force Himself upon us, put limits on us, or think up new ways in which to punish or toy with us in any way. Any other teaching about God is simply wrong-minded and based upon ego-perceptions.
In the last paragraph of today’s text reading, Jesus tells us that God is not our teacher. God does not see that we lack anything; His attitude toward us is not conflicted; He sees no reason for us to change because He created us as perfect and therefore changeless. God does not see the separation as a loss of our perfection, but merely a failure in communication. The mean, stern voice of ego can never shatter the peace of God or make Him lose faith in His own Creation. This would weaken God and we could not trust in Him if He could so be weakened. However, believing in the harsh voice of ego instead of the peace of God has shattered our peace. We have taken the wrong voice and called it God, but God’s Voice remained ever the same. He has no need to blot out the wrong voice, because God has no need for attack of any kind. Why would He Who is Everything, attack that which is nothing? How can that which has no truth, which is a dream, which is a magical enchantment based upon illusion be attacked? How can the truth be “proved,” in a perceptual world terrified of all that is spirit and truth? To these questions, God does not respond with more questions – He simply provides the Answer. His Answer is our teacher, the Voice for God within our higher minds teaching us, guiding us, and never letting us forget who we really are and where we really belong. Holy Spirit will lead us home.
In our devotional practice today let us thank our holy brother, Jesus for making this truth apparent to us. Let us thank the scribes and the many people who put their time, efforts, and energies into dispersing A Course in Miracles. Let us thank the people who brought it to our attention. For me, it was Dan Sweeney, my supervisor and friend, who led me to A Course in Miracles after I shared the messages of my Inner Voice with him.
So many of us cannot put our faith in our religious traditions, attend church regularly, or read our sacred texts – for we keep coming up against a version of God that demands sacrifice, false humility, sorrowful supplication, and vengeance. Our higher minds where Holy Spirit resides can not find truth, rest, or peace in that which distorts God’s Love and keeps us trapped in a perceptual world trying to appease that which never be appeased. Holy Spirit knows the difference between truth and fiction. Holy Spirit knows the way out. Holy Spirit is God’s Response to our dilemma.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 6 The lessons of love. IV The only answer. 7-12. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
For daily 2021 Workbook lessons visit www.i-choose-love.com courtesy of Linda R.
Audio credit: www.eckiefriar.com
the friar patch 