The Correction of Fear Is Your Responsibility. When You Ask for Release from Fear, You Are Implying that It Is Not.

“The correction of fear is your responsibility. When you ask for release from fear, you are implying that it is not. You should ask, instead, for help in the conditions that have brought the fear about. (T29)”

Affirmation: “help in the conditions that have brought the fear about”

Reflections:

1 – A Sequence of Thoughts

These three sentences, and the order in which they appear, are a very important sequence. We may feel that the correction of fear is beyond what we can do, but this passage says not. We can get help, though, in the slightly different matter of the “conditions” that brought the fear about. For that we ask for help, and rightly so. And when we ask, we receive.

2 – Cause and Effect

Jesus says elsewhere that if he were to remove the fear for us, he would be tampering with a most important aspect of reality, cause and effect. We have to take responsibility for what we have made in this world, and fear is one of those things that the ego has made. It is not real, but we don’t realize this when we are in throes.

3 – Personal Experience

I have not always taken kindly to this assertion of Jesus. I have thought, previously, that if a minor tranquillizer could remove anxiety, how is this OK to be effective when Jesus himself does not help directly (as he says he won’t)? The reason is that the Valium or Xanax is a magic potion, but a pill that is quite in line with what we might do in our fear-weakened state. Jesus does not directly encourage pills, but he does say that sometimes we have to take an oblique approach to illness and let medication do its work. He indicates, though, that pills are a form of magic or magical approach to our ailments.

4 – Conditions

The most important thing to remember is that Jesus will help with the conditions that have brought the fear about, and this is a very close thing to helping directly with the fear. And it does not tamper with the effect that we have wrought when we made a cause that brought the anxiety upon us. We do have the power to handle anxiety, and prayer and meditation are among our most potent tools in our tool kit. Jesus walks beside us, when we call for him (“a single unequivocal call” from the Text of A Course in Miracles), and this in itself is frequently enough to take the agitation from us. It has proved to be enough for me on any number of occasions.

5 – Pivotal

The matter of conditions is pivotal. There is always an (insane) reason that we feel fearful. We don’t need to understand insanity, but we do need to leave it behind, and this passage notes that the help we need in leaving insanity behind is there for the asking. Indeed, we cannot understand insanity, for it is beyond reason, being irrational. Remember that the ego approves of our analyzing our conditions, as this seems to lean credence to the importance of the ego. Let such analysis drop by the wayside. It will get us nowhere. Instead, we need to note madness when we see it, and then quietly let it go.

6 – Fearful Thoughts = Madness

Fearful thoughts are always a form of madness, the form in which most of us live in this world the vast majority of the time. Until we willingly leave fear behind and return to love consistently, we will be afraid periodically. Can this be something we want to keep?

7 – Our Power

It is very reassuring to hear from Jesus in ACIM that we have the power to remove fear. Our minds are very powerful and never rest, even in sleep (from ACIM). We do not normally credit the mind with such power because we are afraid of this power (also from ACIM). But we need not fear our own minds when we have willingly laid down our own judgment and turned to the Holy Spirit for His help. He will guide us surely. More than surely. It is one of His functions, and He will not neglect His functions. We do not know all the conditions that surround us–past, present, and future–and so we would choose wrongly. Turn to one who does have this prescience. And life will smooth out. I know this for a fact.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I leave fear behind. This sometimes seems impossible to me, but You have promised that I can do so.

May I have the help that You have promised with the conditions that have brought the fear about. Then my fear is self-controlled, which is what Jesus asks me to do.

Amen.

There Is No Strain in Doing God’s Will as Soon as You Recognize that It Is Also Your Own

“There is no strain in doing God’s Will as soon as you recognize that it is also your own. (T30)”

Affirmation: “no strain in doing God’s will”

Reflections:

1 – Theory

This sentence is a primary theoretical foundation for the Course. Much of our rebellion has been predicated upon the idea that we would not believe that God’s will would be desirable; we think that we can choose better. We even think that His will is punitive. But we are a part of God, and He chooses for us when He makes decisions. We truly want what He wants for us. He chooses in our best interests, nothing punitive at all. And we are happier when we follow His Will as conveyed by the Holy Spirit. This conveyance can come by way of intuition, locutions (inner thoughts that appear to be beyond us), silence in which we come to “know,” words that we say to ourselves that somehow seem to be a wisdom that is greater than our own. God’s ways of reaching us are myriad. Being sure that we want what He wants for us is the most important point.

2 – Procrastination

If we cannot fulfill what we feel to be God’s will for us, then let us change our decision as soon as we can. Often we are stubborn. And we set ourselves on a given course of action, thinking that some small thing will satisfy us, when we want it “all.” A Course in Miracles makes this clear. It is according to our natures to want the All, everything. And to decide that some small boon is what we want, and that we will be satisfied if we have it, is to listen to the ego, which wishes us no good.

3 – God’s Will and Our Real Will

How wrong we are! God’s will and our own “real” will are the same! What a relief this can be. Our thoughts of Jonah and the whale may be relegated to an Old Testament/Hebrew Bible story, not meaningful in the world in which we live today. With Jonah, the idea that God would pursue us and demand that we do His will, is the main crux of the matter. In ACIM, we are gently led to do God’s will, once we have understood that we are actually doing our own will at the same time. The God of A Course in Miracles is in no way a punitive God.

4 – Personal Experience

I used to fret quite a bit about God’s will, for I determined a course of action for my life when I was 22 that did not let up until I have followed that pathway through the early months of my 35th year. I had various “signs” along the way that I was on the right pathway, but nobody believed me. God had shut me up to Himself alone, and there He kept me. Thankfully, I stayed true to the course. I think that maybe I would have had emotional crises unless I had, and my life from age 25 to 34 was rather smooth. I was not happy about following this course that appeared laid out by God, but though a reluctant follower, I did not seriously consider leaving aside this pathway. I still, many years later, don’t know if I was really right, but what I know of God has expanded, and it seems to me that I would have followed a very wrong pathway if I had deviated. Most people do not have to follow a Jonah’s pathway for 14 years, and that is good. I ultimately got what I really wanted out of life, though that life has taken a very different form than I thought at age 22. God does care for us when He gives us specific missions, missions of which we cannot be sure even years later on.

5 – No Strain

So, we experience “no strain” in doing God’s will. We see no conflict in following God’s pathway. It is the pathway that we would choose if we could see the whole picture. Our judgment is not that wondrous; we see imperfectly and only in part. But when we acquiesce to the Holy Spirit, we truly know the peace of following God’s will as our own.

Prayer:

Dear Father,

What a relief to learn that God’s will is really our real will! Thank you, dear Father, for this insight.

When we know that doing God’s will, as we perceive it, is really our own real will, we do not feel coerced. Thank you for this insight, this great blessing.

May I have a good day today, years after my wrestle with You about Your will for my life. May I recognize that ultimately I will know whether or not You were really demanding a certain course for my life. My certainty has wavered over the years. But I thank You that You shut me up to Yourself alone. That gave me a solidarity about my life that no other circumstance could have wrought.

Amen.

Jesus: “It Is Possible to Reach a State in which You Bring Your Mind under My Guidance without Conscious Effort.”

“It is possible to reach a state in which you bring your mind under my guidance without conscious effort, but this implies a willingness that you have not developed as yet. (T30)”

Affirmation: “reach a state in which you bring your mind under Jesus’s guidance”

Reflections:

1 – Contradiction?

This passage occurs at the beginning of A Course in Miracles. It suggests that following our guidance must be a willful thing, and that we choose to follow guidance by conscious effort. Yet we are also told that much of the learning of the Course can be effortless. Is this a contradiction?

2 – Progression in ACIM

No, because there is a progression here that we would be wise to understand. In the beginning of our study, we cannot just turn our wills over to Jesus without choosing to do so. It is noteworthy that in these beginning passages, Jesus says that it is “my guidance,” and later on in ACIM, he stresses following the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We are not yet, at this point early on, ready for the more theoretical aspects of the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Later on we are ready. Then we can truly move effortlessly to make decisions with our minds and our spirits.

3 – Jesus as an Accompanying Friend

It is very possible to see Jesus as our friend who accompanies throughout our day and all of our rounds in it. Norman Vincent Peale also recommends that we adopt this attitude. Is it a fallacy? Actually I draw on my faith when I believe that Jesus can clone himself, and be anywhere at once. His mission is to save our souls, and he does so by being on call when we place “one unequivocal call” (from the Text of ACIM) to him. This assurance is much desired on a personal note by me. I like the fact that the Beloved of God is willing to spend time with me–and with all of us, upon the asking. I like the fact that he guides our decision making. He does not want to make our decisions for us, though, as he pointed out, in interior monologue to Mari Perron (scribe of A Course of Love). We make our decisions in consultation with the Holy Spirit (when following ACIM) and in consultation with the inner Christ Self (when following A Course of Love). We are never left bereft of guidance. And I personally have needed to know what to do and say in my life. I have wanted that guidance, though sometimes (in my weakest moments) I have chafed against it. I have sometimes felt, when sensing intuition, that I was in a straitjacket, that I had to do what the guidance indicated. I don’t have to do so, but long experience has shown me that I am happiest when I follow guidance. And the fact that that guidance comes with Jesus’s hand in mine is a very loving attitude that improves my day.

4 – Personal Experience

I have sensed, as time has gone on, that I do not struggle so much to know what guidance is telling me. Words come into my mind, but from a place a bit beyond me, giving me guidance. I test out this form of guidance, for if anything is harmful to anybody, it is of the ego and best left alone. But, by and large, the guidance that I get through unconscious turning over my mind to God is sure. It is benevolent. And kind. This progression is much sought after by me, but it was a long time coming. Surely all of us can can await the time that we bring our minds under guidance without conscious effort. In the meantime, we can use our intuition, which is a form of guidance, to know what and how to respond in our world.

5 – Jesus as Helper

We need to realize that Jesus in all likelihood gets a great deal out pleasure out of helping us. I don’t see it as a burden to him, but the fulfillment of his mission–begun years ago, and if we read Edgar Cayce, honed through many reincarnations before he became the man Jesus. (I neither encourage not reject reincarnation. Let your guidance tell you what you believe.) If I felt that I were burdening Jesus by encouraging the sense that he is near, I would be loathe to do it. But his fellowship is one of the great blessings of my life, and I welcome his help in the decisions that I am called upon to make.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I bring my mind under the guidance of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. May this form of intuition be something that will bless others in my world as well as myself.

I realize that this need not be hard. Indeed, surrendering to guidance can be effortless. Help it to be effortless in me today.

I would lead a good life today, though I know that good intentions are not enough. Give me governance over my temper. May I be good to the people whom I encounter today. May I feel Your Presence, and may Your Presence inform me about what and how to think, say, and do. Thank You.

Amen.