Add Joy to the Kingdom

“God is praised whenever any mind learns to be wholly helpful. This is impossible without being wholly harmless, because the two beliefs must coexist. The truly helpful are invulnerable, because they are not protecting their egos, so that nothing can hurt them. Their helpfulness is their praise of God, and He will return their praise of Him, because they are like Him and can rejoice together. God goes out to them and through them, and there is great joy throughout the Kingdom. Every mind that is changed adds to this joy with its own individual willingness to share in it.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-4.X.10:1-6)

We could well make “helpful and harmless” an affirmation, to good effect. This is the way that we want to be.
“Helpful” means that we reach out to our fellow man and woman, our brothers and sisters, with words and deeds that will offer solace. It is often solace, for this world seems cruel, and many are those who suffer in it.

“Harmless” means that we will not attack or respond in anger, regardless of the provocation. This can be a hard affirmation to live up to, but live up to it, we must. We cannot attack and expect to take our place in heaven, which on earth is known as the Awakening (enlightenment or Christ-consciousness). When we go easy, often keep a low profile, and ask if making waves is really appropriate, then we are more likely to be harmless. While we still need to be appropriately assertive, aggressiveness can get us into trouble. We do not want to be patsies for the wrong deeds of others, but we will find a lot less to complain about when our attack mode is silenced.

We want to add to the joy of the Kingdom, and we spectacularly do when we are both helpful and harmless. Anything less, and we are less than we are meant to be.

Ask the Holy Spirit how we might best fulfill these attitudes. He will have lots of ideas.

Harmless & Helpful

“Whether you know it now or not, however, you have willed to cooperate in a concerted and very commendable effort to become both harmless and helpful, two attributes which must go together. Your attitudes, even toward this, are necessarily conflicted, because all attitudes are ego-based. This will not last. Be patient a while and remember what we said once before: The outcome is as certain as God!” (ACIM, COA ed., T-4.III.9:1-4)

So we are to be both harmless and helpful, an assertion that tells us how to interact with our brothers and sisters. We may sometimes become angry with them, but anger is not a sin, and when we regroup, we will realize a better way is to live and let live. Nothing more. We will not attack in retaliation, being harmless. We will seek proactively to be good to others, being helpful. These two words, harmless and helpful, give us a mantra to take us through our sometimes stressful days with our brothers and sisters.

We are going to make it back to God; the outcome is certain. Once the journey back has begun (and it has begun for all of us reading and writing this), the end is a clear thing, a certain thing (as Jesus tells us). We need not agonize that we are doing things all wrong, because we are doing the best we can at any given time.

It Is Impossible to Be Wholly Helpful without Being Wholly Harmless. The Two Beliefs Must Coexist.

“God is praised whenever any mind learns to be wholly helpful. This is impossible without being wholly harmless, because the two beliefs must coexist. The truly helpful are invulnerable, because they are not protecting their egos and so nothing can hurt them. (T71)”

1 – Helpful and Harmless

May we learn to be both helpful and harmless. This passage recommends that harmlessness is an attribute of those who are following its way of peace and love. We will not attack when in our right mind, though we sometimes slip up. We know that anger is unjustified, even though we may still feel it from time to time.

2 – Invulnerable to Pain

When we are bent on helping our brothers and sisters, we will not knowingly do them harm. Not only do they benefit, but so do we. This helpfulness renders us invulnerable to the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” to quote Shakespeare. What this means is that we are invulnerable to pain from our egoic selves. We are leaving our egos behind as we embark on the pathway set forth by A Course in Miracles.

3 – Goals

So: helpful and harmless. What goals these are! And how blessed we are when, even in our imperfection, we reach those goals in our daily lives.

4 – Existence vs. Being

“Existence as well as being rest on communication. Existence, however, is specific in how, what and with whom communication is judged to be worth undertaking. Being is completely without these distinctions. It is a state in which the mind is in communication with everything that is real. (T70)”

This passage is often overlooked in A Course in Miracles, but it is a comparison of existence (which is of the ego), and being (which is of God). Previously, many of us who study ACIM might have made decisions about which people were worth our time. But this is a false distinction. We need to be totally in communication with all that is real—and individuals, our brothers and sisters, are real. We feel love for them, and sometimes we feel hate. But never are we indecisive about feeling for others. We may not know what to feel, but feel we must. It is locked in our bones.

5 – God as Being

We need to understand our being, which is better than mere existence. Another name for God is Being, with a capital “B.” And we are part of God, but we do not capitalize our personal, or little, self. We need to be in communication with others, giving them our love, not our hate. And we will find a way when we open ourselves to the Holy Spirit, the Universal Inspiration.

6 – Sharing

“God, Who encompasses all being, created beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing real can be increased except by sharing. That is why God created you. (T70)”

Gerald Jampolsky, in Love Is Letting Go of Fear, put a great deal of emphasis upon the fact that the intangibles of God—the love, the harmony, the peace, the joy—are increased by sharing; other the other hand, material goods diminish when shared. And material goods, like everything in this world that we can see with our physical eyes, are illusion.

7 – Why God Created Us

Here we learn why God created us: to increase the real by sharing. He shared with us, and we are meant, ultimately, to be co-creators with Him. Let us hasten that day along today.

8 – Praising God

“The Bible repeatedly states that you should praise God. This hardly means that you should tell Him how wonderful He is. He has no ego with which to accept such praise, and no perception with which to judge it. (T70 – T71)”

I have often found this passage to be somewhat amusing. In our previous lives, before ACIM, we may have thought just that—that God wanted us to tell Him how wonderful he is, by praising Him. But this type of praise feeds the ego, and God knows not the ego. So we praise God, but not to appeal to an ego-less Being. We praise because we need to express gratitude for our own sakes.

9 – Lonely God

“The constant going out of His Love is blocked when His channels are closed, and He is lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully with Him. (T71)”

This is an especially sweet passage, that God would be lonely if we do not commune with Him. Elsewhere we learn that He recognizes that we are asleep and need to be awakened. And He sends the Holy Spirit to show us the way.

10 – Internal Dialogue

We would be far better off if we carried on an internal dialogue with God all through our days. He will speak to us, and we do not have to fear that our sanity will be jeopardized. Indeed, our sanity will be restored instead. For we have been mad, quite insane, with an ego that has driven us to madness. Let us be done with this foolishness. Learn what joys await on a day dedicated to communion with God. We do not have to jeopardize anything in our busy lives. But the better parts of ourselves will be augmented.

Prayer:

Dear Father,

May I not lose my temper. May I remain helpful and harmless to my brothers and sisters. May I communicate with God today on an ongoing basis. May I forget not.

It God is lonely when He realizes that our channels of communication are closed, may we act today to open them up to Him. What better way to experiment with reality?

When I have remained helpful and harmless, then I am invulnerable to hurts as well. This is a great desire of mine. Thank you for helping me to be both helpful and harmless.

Amen.

Helpful and Harmless

“God is praised whenever any mind learns to be wholly helpful.  This is impossible without being wholly harmless, because the two beliefs must coexist.  The truly helpful are invulnerable, because they are not protecting their egos and so nothing can hurt them.  (T71)”

Affirmation:  “The truly helpful are invulnerable.”

Reflections:

1 – We Can Learn to Be Helpful and Harmless

May we learn to be both helpful and harmless.  This passage recommends that harmlessness is an attribute of those who are following its way of peace and love.  We will not attack when in our right mind, though we sometimes slip up.  We know that anger is unjustified, even though we may still feel it from time to time.

2 – Conflict

When we are unnaturally tired, it is my interpretation that we are struggling with some conflict that Jesus would willingly take from us.  Ask the Holy Spirit how He would have us react.  If we are struggling to “do something” for a brother or sister, and it just doesn’t feel right (though it would be a loving act), perhaps now is not the right time.  Perhaps we need to reassess and ask how we might really help.  Sometimes doing nothing at all, at the present moment, is the right response, the harmless response.

3 – Invulnerability for Us

When we are bent on helping our brothers and sisters, we will not knowingly do them harm.  Not only do they benefit, but so do we.  This helpfulness renders us invulnerable to the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” to quote Shakespeare.  What this means is that we are invulnerable to pain from our egoic selves.  We are leaving our egos behind as we embark on the pathway set forth by A Course in Miracles.

4 – Laudable Goals

So:  helpful and harmless.  What goals these are!  And how blessed we are when, even in our imperfection, we reach those goals in our daily lives.

Prayer:

Dear Father,

May I not lose my temper.  May I remain helpful and harmless to my brothers and sisters.  

When I have remained helpful and harmless, then I am invulnerable to hurts as well.  This is a great desire of mine.  Thank you for helping me to be both helpful and harmless.

Amen.