III. The Decision for Guiltlessness 11-19
11. It will never happen that you must make decisions for yourself. You are not bereft of help and help that knows the answer. Would you be content with little, which is all that you alone can offer yourself, when He who gives you everything will simply offer it to you? He will never ask what you have done to make you worthy of the gift of God. Ask it not therefore of yourself. Instead, accept His answer, for He knows that you are worthy of everything God wills for you. Do not try to escape the gift of God He so freely and so gladly offers you. He offers you but what God gave Him for you. You need not decide whether or not you are deserving of it. God knows you are.
12. Would you deny the truth of God’s decision, and place your pitiful appraisal of yourself in place of His calm and unswerving value of His Son? Nothing can shake God’s conviction of the perfect purity of everything that He created, for it is wholly pure. Do not decide against it, for being of Him it must be true. Peace abides in every mind that quietly accepts the plan God set for its Atonement, relinquishing its own. You know not of Salvation, for you do not understand it. Make no decisions about what it is or where it lies, but ask the Holy Spirit everything, and leave all decisions to His gentle counsel.
13. The One Who knows the plan of God that God would have you follow can teach you what it is. Only His wisdom is capable of guiding you to follow it. Every decision you undertake alone but signifies that you would define what Salvation is, and what you would be saved from. The Holy Spirit knows that all Salvation is escape from guilt. You have no other “enemy,” and against this strange distortion of the purity of the Son of God the Holy Spirit is your only friend. He is the strong protector of the innocence that set you free. And it is His decision to undo everything that would obscure your innocence from your unclouded mind.
14. Let Him, therefore, be the only Guide that you would follow to Salvation. He knows the way and leads you gladly on it. With Him you will not fail to learn that what God wills for you is your will. Without His guidance you will think you know alone and will decide against your peace as surely as you decided that Salvation lay in you alone. Salvation is of Him to Whom God gave it for you. He has not forgotten it. Forget Him not and He will make every decision for you, for your Salvation, and the peace of God in you.
15. Seek not to appraise the worth of God’s Son whom He created holy, for to do so is to evaluate his Father and judge against Him. And you will feel guilty for this imagined crime, which no one in this world or Heaven could possibly commit. The Holy Spirit teaches only that the “sin” of self-replacement on the throne of God is not a source of guilt. What cannot happen can have no effects to fear. Be quiet in your faith in Him who loves you and would lead you out of insanity. Madness may be your choice, but not your reality. Never forget the Love of God, who has remembered you. For it is quite impossible that He could ever let His Son drop from the loving Mind wherein he was created, and where his abode was fixed in perfect peace forever.
16. Say to the Holy Spirit only, “Decide for me,” and it is done. For His decisions are reflections of what God knows about you, and in this light, error of any kind becomes impossible. Why would you struggle so frantically to anticipate all you cannot know, when all knowledge lies behind every decision the Holy Spirit makes for you? Learn of His wisdom and His Love and teach His answer to everyone who struggles in the dark. For you decide for them and for yourself.
17. How gracious it is to decide all things through Him Whose equal love is given equally to all alike! He leaves you no one outside you. And so He gives you what is yours, because your Father would have you share it with Him. In everything be led by Him, and do not reconsider. Trust Him to answer quickly, surely, and with love for everyone who will be touched in any way by the decision. And everyone will be. Would you take on to yourself the sole responsibility for deciding what can bring only good to everyone? Would you know this?
18. You taught yourself the most unnatural habit of not communicating with your Creator. Yet you remain in close communication with him, and with everything that is within him, as it is within yourself. Unlearn isolation through His loving guidance and learn of all the happy communication that you have thrown away but could not lose.
19. Whenever you are in doubt what you should do, think of His presence in you, and tell yourself this, and only this: “He leadeth me and knows the way, which I know not. Yet He will never keep from me what He would have me learn. And so I trust Him to communicate to me all that He knows for me.” Then let Him teach you quietly how to perceive your guiltlessness, which is already there.[1]
In the perceptual world, we need help. And help is always available to us for Holy Spirit dwells within our higher mind which never separated from God and therefore has all knowledge. In your personal devotional practice, learn of Holy Spirit. Develop the spiritual habit of talking to God about everything and learning to listen to the Voice for God within us.
Our egos will want us to think of ourselves as fine without this constant communication with God. What do we need to always consult Him for anyway? We are doing fine on our own! We get ourselves up and off to work. We have all the nice things we could need. We have great friends, a wonderful family, a roof over our heads and we did it all ourselves without a hand from God. The world will tell us that we can figure things out for ourselves. If we get sick we have doctors and hospitals to make us better. If we are ignorant, we can take a course in any subject we want to educate ourselves with. If we are poor, we can get a job and work hard and save our money and become rich. What do we need God for anyway? God is only for those who cannot make it in the world on their own. The weak, the helpless, the ignorant.
But Jesus tells us that we have no idea that salvation is and what we need it for on our own. As long as we resist getting to know and trust Holy Spirit and learning to live in the grace of God’s Will our lives have no meaning. All the things we do and all the place we go, all the things we perceive with our flesh eyes, all the stories we make up, all the drama we put ourselves through turns into nothingness. It becomes the past and there is no past for the past goes away and does not repeat itself. Even the brightest and richest and most powerful people on earth and cannot live forever – their flesh withers on their bones, their senses fail them, they make really stupid decisions that hurt a lot of people. Their fame, fortune, and contributions to the world cannot buy what Holy Spirit gives to us simply because He knows who and what are to God.
Jesus tells us to accept ourselves not as part of this illusion but as God’s guiltless Son in Christ. And as God’s guiltless Son we have a constant helper and guide to teach us how to communicate naturally and graciously with our Heavenly Father. We will be given navigational information that will not only benefit our own lives but will bring love and joy and peace to all. Our lives will mean something instead of nothing. What we say and what we do will be inspired by that which reminds us of our true Identity in God. We will bring forth the vision of Christ with our lives rather than spend our lives living lives that go a lot of places and yet go nowhere and do a lot of things and yet do nothing and see a lot of things yet perceive nothing.
In your personal devotional practice, consciously practice the presence of God. Throughout the day even during your most mundane daily chores or in handling the stressors that come up at work, the lazy employees, the demanding bosses, the obnoxious, gossipy coworkers – decide with Holy Spirit instead of for yourself. Ask for the Vision of Christ rather than your own flesh vision which obscures the real world and fills your perceptions with judgment and condemnation. Do not be afraid of the holiness of God for you are His Son, even as Christ is His Son. In Christ we are one Son – guiltless and worthy. When we decide for guiltlessness, we not only bless ourselves we bless the whole world and everybody in it. Join with me in the following prayer:
Lead me Holy Spirit because You know the way. There is certainly no possible way for me to know it for I can only perceive a very small part of the perceptual world while You know everything. Prepare my mind and heart and teach me all that You have for me to learn. Help me to be a happy learner – accepting my worthiness as God’s Son. In the name of Jesus, with Whom we are one. Amen.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 14 Teaching for truth. III The decision for guiltlessness 11-19. 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 