I. Guiltlessness and Invulnerability 1-4
- Earlier, I said that the Holy Spirit shares the goal of all good teachers, whose ultimate aim is to make themselves unnecessary by teaching their pupils all they know. The Holy Spirit wants only this, for sharing the Father’s love for His Son, He seeks to remove all guilt from his mind that he may remember His Father in peace. Peace and guilt are antithetical, and the Father can be remembered only in peace. Love and guilt cannot coexist, and to accept one is to deny the other. Guilt hides Christ from your sight, for it is the denial of the blamelessness of God’s Son.
- In the strange world that you have made the Son of God has sinned. How could you see Him, then? By making Him invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt that you accepted, and you hold it dear. For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and never can be. Without guilt the ego has no life, and God’s Son is without guilt.
- As you look upon yourself and judge what you do honestly, you may be tempted to wonder how you can be guiltless. Yet consider this: You are not guiltless in time, but in eternity. You have “sinned” in the past, but there is no past. Always has no direction. Time seems to go in one direction, but when you reach its end it will roll up like a long carpet spread along the past behind you and will disappear. As long as you believe the Son of God is guilty you will walk along this carpet, believing that it leads to death. And the journey will seem long and cruel and senseless, for so it is.
- The journey the Son of God has set himself is useless indeed, but the journey on which His Father sets him is one of release and joy. The Father is not cruel, and His Son cannot hurt himself. The retaliation that he fears and that he sees will never touch him, for although he believes in it the Holy Spirit knows it is not true. The Holy Spirit stands at the end of time, where you must be because He is with you. He has already undone everything unworthy of the Son of God, for such was His mission, given Him by God. And what God gives has always been.[1]
As we still our minds and come to God in peace let us learn from Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is a perfect Teacher whose aim is to bring us to into the full knowledge of God, where we longer need a teacher or a guide. Today we will focus our minds on the concept of guiltlessness for we must remember God in peace – and there is no guilt in peace. Thoughts of guilt and feelings of shame must have no place in our minds for to accept them is to deny Love, to accept guilt and shame hides Sonship from our sight for it denies our worthiness as God’s Son.
In paragraph two, Jesus refers to this realm as the world we, as humans, made – as separate individuals, we each took own personal take on truth. Truth was twisted; truth was perverted, and those who believed in the twisted and those who believed in the perverted banded together for a bit and then split off to even more twists and more perversions. What a big hot mess of contradiction, opposition, and conflict. In this worldview – we really have sinned and in this hot mess is it impossible to know God. And no matter how painful it has become to us; we love our sense of sin and shame and guilt. We entertain ourselves with guilt. We make up stories about it. We have whole systems dedicated to guilt, condemnation, death, and despair. We hold guilt dear to our heart and love to dig up reasons to pronounce others blameworthy. We cherish the pointing of fingers, the calling of names, and the judging and condemnation.
If we step out of guilt and the shame and blame of it all, the rug is pulled right out from under the ego giving it no power, no life, and no history. It just dissipates in the light of guiltlessness. It has nowhere to hide and nowhere to abide in a guiltless mind. A guiltless mind is a peaceful mind. I can no longer look upon my brother as dirty and corrupt, lustful and dangerous, stupid and dense. While the ego would make of my brother pathetic at best and monstrous at worst, Jesus says, No! You and your brother may be guilty as prisoners of time, but never in the freedom and liberty of eternity. That which is twisted, deformed, seductive and false is a thing of the past and the past is already over, time is no more.
Jesus tells us at the end of paragraph three that until we are willing to accept our guiltlessness we will walk along the carpet of time believing that it leads to death. The journey will seem long and cruel and without meaning because this is the only way a journey in guilt can be.
A guilty journey is a journey which is needlessly stressful and sorrowful. There is no certainty. There is nothing but an ongoing cycle with a lot of pointless things happening between birth and death. A lot seems to be happening. Everyone seems to be moving about a lot. There is always a lot to do, but nothing ever really happens. Countless occasions for love and peace and joy are overlooked in the mad rush to find meaning in nothingness.
The journey to our Father sets us free and fills our hearts with joy. We recognize the tenderness of our Father; we recognize the unreality of the cruel world and the mean things that happen here. We see that all that we fear will never touch us for our holiness and our Spirit stand at the end of time, where we must be because Holy Spirit is with us. It is all over even as we witness it moment-by-moment and day-by-day – time flies past and even before I finish this sentence it will be over and in the past – just like this world, just like our humanity in it, just like our sins and our guilt and our pain! All that is unworthy has been undone for this is the mission of Holy Spirit given us by God – and what God gives has always been.
When we accept God’s version of us, we are as we were created: innocent, pure, beautiful, and worthy. Nobody can take God’s version of us away. Nobody can destroy it. Nobody can steal it or pervert it for what God gives has always been and ever will be.
Today in your personal devotional practice, ask God to show you His version of you and ask Him for the Mind and the Vision of Christ so that you may accept your perfect Sonship. Let your guilt go by absolving the guilt you would cast upon others. Accept the peace that ushers in the memory of God. Above all be blessed and full of joy in your walk to God. Remember that this path is easy and full of light. If you feel heavy and resentful, worried and out-of-sorts, ask God to relieve you of your burdens and give you rest. Ask Holy Spirit to fill your mind with appreciation and love for we cannot walk this path if we think that the world is ours to save, this world is ours to clean up, this world is ours to change. As we rely upon our Teacher and our Guide, the terrors and worries of this world melt away and the Real World emerges in the guiltlessness and invulnerability of Christ, God’s Son.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 13 The guiltless world. I. Guiltlessness and invulnerability. 1-4 Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
For corresponding 2021 Workbook lessons visit www.i-choose-love.com
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