ACIM–Preparation for Our Mission

“All learning involves attention and study at some level. This course is a mind-training course. Good students assign study periods for themselves. However, since this obvious step may not have occurred to you and since we are cooperating in this, I urge you to make the obvious assignment. You may understand the need to study this course yet still not realize that many of the problems you keep being faced with may already have been solved here. Perhaps you do not think of the course in this way at all. Or perhaps you do from time to time, but then think the answer is probably in here and do not look it up. You vaguely know that the course is intended for some sort of preparation. But are you prepared?” (ACIM, COA ed., T-3.I.1:1-9)

Here Jesus is talking to Helen, we might believe, Helen and Bill, the co-scribes. We, like they, are training our minds. We are bringing up for reconsideration all of the subconscious material that has so plagued us. Then we are ripe for healing, all the way down to the depths of the mind.

Jesus answers many of our questions in what he channels in A Course in Miracles. I remember my first reading of the Course. I would be puzzled about something, ask in my mind the answer to my question, and then find the answer on the very next page, if not the next paragraph. The flow of words is masterful, as befits a master, Jesus himself. One sentence builds on the preceding and flows into the next. We are not left hanging at any point.

Jesus shows ever so slight an impatience with Helen and Bill that they are not making good use of the material he is giving them. Are we?
We are not yet fully prepared, even if we have walked closely with Jesus for a long time. The time with the ego has been damaging, and we need a healed mind to proceed on our real work, the work of awakening our fellow souls. This is the real task ahead.

And A Course in Miracles provides answers to how best to do that.

Mission

“Souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-1.27:3)

Here Jesus says something that I read a long time ago in Edgar Cayce. (Jesus mentions Cayce in the complete edition of A Course in Miracles.) Edgar indicated that certain souls came to earth to rescue other souls who had lost the light and were trapped here. In this quotation, Jesus seems to be saying that we have a mission, to save souls. Of course, we aren’t encouraged to save souls if the people having those souls are not open to hearing from us. We wait until God’s Voice has spoken to their hearts.

I think that this statement of Jesus goes a long way toward explaining the heralding of the elevated Self of form in A Course of Love. We need to inhabit a physical body to fulfill our mission. A Course in Miracles had focused on the ethereal so much that many of us just wanted to be rid of the earth, to get on with a better place on the Other Side. But we are needed here.

Each day we might ask the Holy Spirit or our deeper Self what the miracles for the day really are. As we know, we don’t make this decision. We ask how we might best express love in our daily round. We ask, and we are told. Then we act.

What Ought I to Do?

“You who have so recently felt the peace of true acceptance are not asked to leave that peace to go in search of calling but are rather asked to listen from within that peace to what you feel called to do. This is not about the past and all those things that at one time or another you thought would bring you fulfillment. This is about recognizing who you are not. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Nature of Unity and Its Recognition, 4.12)”

Affirmation: “I would listen within my peace today.”

Reflections:

1 – Listen Within

This passage is very reassuring. We don’t have to go in search of who we are; we listen within, and that within place is a place of peace. We do not have to search out what we are to do next, what our calling is. This will come to us in due time. Jesus seems bent on giving us a sense of solace, or comfort. We are alright the way we are, and we certainly do not have to merit God’s grace. His grace is a free offer, open to all who turn to Him.

2 – Fulfillment

We have searched in many places to find fulfillment. But we know now that fulfillment through material goods is a fulfillment of the ego, and we are letting the ego go. This means that the present emphasis in our society on the law of attraction, often that which focuses on material objects, is not fully a good thing. If we are to use the law of attraction well, we will ask for that which is intangible, because it is the intangible that will give us lasting peace. We are never satisfied with material goods, any particular material good, very long. We always have to seek more. But that is the way of the ego–always. And we would be done with the ego.

3 – Past and Present

We are not focusing on the past any longer. Whatever good it held will be saved for us. We are focusing on the present, trying to live in the present with a full heart joined to our mind. We need no more to find the peace that is promised in this passage for today.

4 – Listen in Our Hearts

When we listen within the peace–in our hearts–we will know what to do next. We will not second guess this advice, because it will come through to us gently and it will be easily fulfilled. Intuition is never strident. We are not coerced, and if it seems that we are, we are allowing our ego to rule again. The advice from inner peace is always reassuring and well-received, for the Christ Self knows what to do next. Our personal “little” selves do not know. And unless we are overwrought, we will hear accurately.

5 – Being Overwrought

Being overwrought is one time that guidance has trouble getting through to us. So, if we find ourselves overwrought, it is best to take at time out, a period of contemplation, meditation, or prayer, that will still our minds. Then what our heart is trying to tell us will be heard clear as a bell. Let not doubts interfere. And remember that any seeming advice that would harm another is false. Only good comes from inner peace, from listening to our Christ Self.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Help me to listen within so that I know, beyond a doubt, what I should do next. I am beyond trying to merit Your favor by doing “good.” You don’t want me to “achieve” to be loved by You. Your love is always here.

Thank You for the sense of Your presence that abides within me in my better moments. May I treat others with the same good will that I would wish to receive. May my words be gentle and kind. May no anger mar the good intentions of what I say or do.

May the day be peaceful and quiet. May no overwrought emotions come between You and me. I need to keep a peaceful heart to be able to hear Your word.

Amen

Our Mission Is Very Simple

“My trust in you is greater than yours in me at the moment, but it will not always be that way.  Your mission is very simple.  You are asked to live so as to demonstrate that you are not an ego, and I do not choose God’s channels wrongly.  (T68)”

Affirmation:  “Jesus does not choose God’s channels wrongly.”

Reflections:

1 – The Ego

Jesus seeks to bring us to him in these well-chosen words.  He assures us that he is certain that we will live without the ego, that we will first live as though we are without an ego.

2 – Mission Substantial

We have a substantial mission in this world.  We are one of “God’s channels.”  We are meant not to find our way Home ourselves, but also to facilitate the coming Home of our brothers and sisters.  Jesus’s faith in us in intense, because he knows that the only way that this world can work is if we do our part to reform the hearts and minds of our brothers and sisters–not to speak of our own.  When we do this, all will be well.

3 – Proselytize?

This injunction from Jesus does not mean that we aggressively proselytize.  In A Course in Miracles, he states that some are ready only for a smile.  And so we turn off others if we try to interest them in “our” way–A Course in Miracles–prematurely.  We do not want to turn others off.  We seek to avoid the controversy of theology, as this is only dividing and a barrier between others and us.  We are best to seek help from guidance as often as we possibly can, because we are apt to become zealous in our approach if left on our own.  Jesus does not want us to strain to represent him in this world.  The easy and natural approach will always work best (an interpretation, not stated directly in ACIM).

4 – No Call to Specialness

“I do not choose God’s channels wrongly.”  This is not meant to be a call to specialness.  All are chosen as God’s channels; all are meant to return Home.  And Jesus says elsewhere that all will return, though it may happen over millions of years.  This is not cause for despondency, because we have Jesus as our elder brother every step of the way.  Our own way will lighten immeasurably as we learn to put into practice the dictates of the Course.

Prayer:

Dear Father,

Help me to realize that I am a channel for God.  However many mistakes I make, still is this true.  Thank you.

May I take up my mission in this world.  To do so, I need to live as though I am without ego.  Help me to relinquish the ego, and to take my place in the salvation of this world.

I know that when the ego rears its head, I am unhappy.  This is my clue that I have gotten off my pathway to You.  Please guide me gently back home.

Amen.