III. The Fear of Redemption 7-12
7. And yet he is not crucified. Here is both his pain and his healing, for the Holy Spirit’s vision is merciful and His remedy is quick. Do not hide suffering from His sight but bring it gladly to Him. Lay before His eternal sanity all your hurt and let Him heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His light and search your mind carefully for any thought you may fear to uncover. For He will heal every little thought you have kept to hurt you and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God.
8. Beneath all the grandiosity you hold so dear is your real call for help. For you call for love to your Father as your Father called you to Himself. In that place which you have hidden, you will only to unite with the Father, in loving remembrance of Him. You will find this place of truth as you see it in your brothers and perceiving it you will welcome it, and it will be yours. For grandeur is the right of God’s Son, and no illusions can satisfy him or save him from what he is. Only his love is real, and he will be content only with his reality.
9. Save him from his illusions that you may accept the magnitude of your Father in peace and joy. But exempt no one from your love, or you will be hiding a dark place in your mind where the Holy Spirit is not welcome. And thus you will exempt yourself from His healing power, for by not offering total love you will not be healed completely. Healing must be as complete as fear, for love cannot enter where there is one spot of fear to mar its welcome.
10. You who prefer separation to sanity cannot obtain it in your right mind. You were at peace until you asked for special favor. And God did not give it for the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son. Therefore you made of Him an unloving Father, demanding of Him what only such a father could give. And the peace of God’s Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his real Father, having attacked his own glorious equality with Him.
11. In peace he needed nothing and asked for nothing. In war he demanded everything and found nothing. For how could the gentleness of love respond to his demands, except by departing in peace and returning to the Father? If the Son did not wish to remain in peace, he could not remain at all. For a darkened mind cannot live in the light, and it must seek a place of darkness where it can believe it is where it is not. God did not allow this to happen. Yet you demanded that it happen, and therefore believed that it was so.
12. To “single out” is to “make alone” and thus make lonely. God did not do this to you. Could He set you apart, knowing that your peace lies in His Oneness? He denied you only your request for pain, for suffering is not of His creation. Having given you creation, he could not take it from you. He could but answer your insane request with a sane answer that would abide with you in your insanity. And this He did. No one who hears His answer but will give up insanity. For His answer is the reference point beyond illusions, from which you can look back on them and see them as insane. But seek this place and you will find it, for Love is in you and will lead you there.[1]
Jesus tells us today in our opening paragraph to bring all our sickness, disease, fear, guilt, hatred, and pain of every kind to the inner altar and put it down. We are not to hide it. We are not to be falsely brave and think that this is what we must bear because we are human. What we suffer and what we cause others to suffer – bring gladly to Holy Spirit and let Him heal us. There is a light that Holy Spirit shines upon our mind – there will be things long buried that will rise to the surface of our memory – things we have forgotten about – things that we’ve said, things that we’ve done, things that others have said about us, done to us, things that seemed to set our lives on a downward path. Old hurts and sorrows, old shame and guilt – we are not to keep anything covered. Holy Spirit heals everything we give to Him; He cannot heal what we keep hidden, what we will not confess, what we will not look at and be made aware of. Every unholy desire, every sick thought, all those unkind deeds – the ones we engaged in and the ones that happened to us are healed completely and quickly when we bring them to our awareness and trust Holy Spirit’s mercy and grace.
In paragraph eight, Jesus assures us that no matter how grand we think we are, it is just a cover for a real call for help. We love God as our Father and we know His Love for us. Underneath all our striving in the world, underneath all our hatred, underneath all our love for separation and condemnation and guilt and shame – what we really want is God, we want Love, we yearn for brotherhood. For in reality, Christ is the Sonship even as we are the Sonship. In Sonship is our grandeur – and there is absolutely nothing about the perceptual world that will satisfy or save us or change us from what we are in truth. There is nothing real or everlasting about us that is not loving, good, and kind. We can say all kinds of things about others, we can find all kinds of reasons not to like this one or like that one. We can be jealous – we can hate others and not forgive them for what their ancestors did to our ancestors. None of our sorry opinions and bad feelings toward others will ever content us for they are not ordained by Love and only seem real in a world built on deception.
Jesus enjoins us to save the Sonship from the insane world that sickens us and makes of us that which belittles us and keeps us from peace and joy. Do not withhold God from anyone – offer Love to all for when we withhold Love from others we are withholding it from ourselves – we are keeping a dark spot where Holy Spirit is not welcome. And it is these dark spots of withholding love, withholding God, that impedes our healing for healing is only as complete as love – there is no love and no healing where there is one spot of that which is not love to bar its welcome.
What does this look like in practical application? For me it means making of my mind a Kingdom of Love where thoughts that arise that are not loving, kind, and tender – thoughts of ill will, grudges, resentments, and condemnation simply are not welcome to rest. Today, for instance, while I was paddling about in the pool with my sister, we were talking about an acquaintance who is accused of poisoning her husband. While we do not know this woman intimately she used to attend the same church we attended years ago. We have had a few run-ins with her and her children. Several years ago she was accused of poisoning her first husband, there were accusations of thievery and embezzlement over the years, internet liaisons, and such. As we talked about this would-be killer, Holy Spirit reminded me that I was not being loving, kind, or tender toward her. I was not offering her God but offering her judgment and condemnation. Gossiping about her was not sharing Love. And so I stopped talking about her. In my mind I offered her love. I offered her Sonship. You may think, Oh what a copout. But Jesus tells us that our loving thoughts are powerful, in fact our loving thoughts are the only power we have for they are of God and they bring forth that which is forever.
It does seem exciting to live in a world where the oddest and strangest of things occur on a moment-to-moment basis. There is always something to cluck about! There is always something that will make us feel more special and more righteous and less guilty than others! While I have done a lot of stupid and mean things in my life it didn’t happen to be me that put rat poison in my ex-husband’s coffee – and so it seemed okay to gossip and speculate.
This is not the way to peace – we don’t get to be special at another person’s expense; we don’t share love by blabbing about and taking pleasure in the escapades of those who make mistakes and seem hooked to wrongful acts. As fun as it seems to build cases against others who make stupid errors in judgment and try to get away with unlawful behavior, we hurt and weaken ourselves and need healing, instead of offering it.
In God we have perfect freedom and liberty because we can be trusted with the Sonship. In Love, we can be trusted to be kind, tender, merciful, and gracious. When one of the Sons go wrong, we do not throw darts, we extend love and mercy and goodwill. This is something each one of us can aspire to in our human form. Committing to Christ is committing to our brothers and recognizing our mutuality – doing this raises the consciousness of the whole world and restores the awareness of God to us.
When we are at peace with God we have everything we need; when we are in conflict with God and with each other we have nothing. God does not respond to that which is not love. God does not respond to demands and commands. God does not respond to conflict and argument and calling of names and pronouncing judgments upon others. Love does not attack or go to war – love simply steps out of the picture. Love and the Father are one – when a mind goes dark and prefers shadow to light – it goes nowhere – it goes to a place of nothingness and spins out its make-believe. This is not something that God allows to happen – this is something that happens every time we choose that which is not love.
To remove ourselves from the Sonship makes us lonely, despondent, and afraid. Our Sonship is our immunity; our separateness is disease. God does not do this to us. It is very important that we realize that God does not punish us. God does not sic the devil on us. God does not cast us into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Suffering is not the Creation of God. Creation was given to us by God and cannot be taken away. We can make of Creation what we want to make of it – but make no mistake – when we oppose Love we cast ourselves into a realm of hatred, fear, and vengeance; when we oppose Peace, we cast ourselves into a realm where conflict and war mar the landscape and take lives; when we oppose Joy, we cast ourselves into a realm where there is suffering and sorrow. Casting ourselves into the self-created roles we would project upon our brothers is not only insane, it is dreadful and deadly.
But we are not stuck in this realm or in these roles forever. Our redemption is within each and every one of us. Our redemption is God’s Answer – Holy Spirit abides in you and abides in me placed there forever. Leading us and guiding us past that which makes us sick and drives us batty to that which heals us and restores to us the Mind of Christ, Brotherhood, Sonship.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 13 The guiltless world. III The fear of redemption 7-12. Foundation of Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
For daily 2021 Workbook lessons visit www.i-choose-love.com courtesy of Linda R.
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the friar patch 