In this video recording of a class (shared in one of the ongoing School For A Course In Miracles – SFACIM classes graciously hosted by Lyn Corona and Tim Wise) we read and talked about As for the Rest… (ACIM, M-29) from the Manual for Teachers of A Course In Miracles.
We began this conversation about trusting our Inner Kindness Teacher and benefiting from the comfort that trust brings with a meditative reading from this inspiring “sales pitch” from Holy Spirit for its non-dual thought system (Lesson 122: Forgiveness offers everything I want.) :
“1. What could you want forgiveness cannot give? ²Do you want peace? ³Forgiveness offers it. ⁴Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? ⁵Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? ⁶Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?
2. All this forgiveness offers you, and more. ²It sparkles on your eyes as you awake, and gives you joy with which to meet the day. ³It soothes your forehead while you sleep, and rests upon your eyelids so you see no dreams of fear and evil, malice and attack. ⁴And when you wake again, it offers you another day of happiness and peace. ⁵All this forgiveness offers you, and more.” (ACIM, W-122.1:1–2:5)
The word rest has (at least) a couple of meanings; both of these are helpful in reviewing this section of the manual:
- the remaining part of something, as in the rest of what wasn’t covered in ACIM’s necessarily terse yet extensive coverage of a wide range of topics; we’re encouraged to ask Holy Spirit to help us generalize.
- relax, refresh oneself, or recover strength, which is what happens automatically when we choose to question ego’s incessant raucous shrieks, sick imaginings, (ACIM, W-49.4:3) and wearying propaganda (ACIM, T-27.IV.5:3)
Here are two favorite and impactful paragraphs from “As for the Rest…” (ACIM, M-29) which emphasizes the crucial importance of trusting and following the forgiving thought system of Holy Spirit’s all-seeing vision, since our ability to see our way out of our own labyrinthine nightmares is zero:
“There is another advantage,—and a very important one,—in referring decisions to the Holy Spirit with increasing frequency.²Perhaps you have not thought of this aspect, but its centrality is obvious.³To follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance is to let yourself be absolved of guilt.⁴It is the essence of the Atonement.⁵It is the core of the curriculum.⁶The imagined usurping of functions not your own is the basis of fear.⁷The whole world you see reflects the illusion that you have done so, making fear inevitable.⁸To return the function to the One to Whom it belongs is thus the escape from fear.⁹And it is this that lets the memory of love return to you.¹⁰Do not, then, think that following the Holy Spirit’s guidance is necessary merely because of your own inadequacies.¹¹It is the way out of hell for you.” (ACIM, M-29.3:1-11)
“Who assumes a power that he does not possess is deceiving himself. ²Yet to accept the power given him by God is but to acknowledge his Creator and accept His gifts. ³And His gifts have no limit. ⁴To ask the Holy Spirit to decide for you is simply to accept your true inheritance. ⁵Does this mean that you cannot say anything without consulting Him? ⁶No, indeed! ⁷That would hardly be practical, and it is the practical with which this course is most concerned. ⁸If you have made it a habit to ask for help when and where you can, you can be confident that wisdom will be given you when you need it. ⁹Prepare for this each morning, remember God when you can throughout the day, ask the Holy Spirit’s help when it is feasible to do so, and thank Him for His guidance at night. ¹⁰And your confidence will be well founded indeed.” (ACIM, M-29.5:1-10)
As we develop ever greater trust in Holy Spirit, we become less madly insane, worry less, less constrained by time, and become more comfortable with our real, peaceful, eternal, all-inclusive, undifferentiated, non-dual, completely shared Identity. Our fraudulent egoic identity – incapable of peace, and not seeing it’s own tiny pictures clearly, let alone the “big picture” – is obsessed with fury, hurry and worry, trivial issues, concerns and imagined lacks; its thoughts are obsessed with inconsequential minutiae in the most immature (but forgivable) ways. The Course describes our untrained mind as that of a child, an incapable infant, a baby which “inter-fears” with our peace and comfort.
“If this were the real world, God would be cruel.” (ACIM, T-13.in.3:1)
“God would be cruel if He let your words replace His Own.” (ACIM, M-29.6:8)
If we replace “words” with “worlds” in the sentence above, it also applies nicely!
Weary and worry are two closely related words in the woeful thought system we call ego which insists we leave real comfort at the door of our mind:
“When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself. ²Your Comforter will rest you, but you cannot. ³You do not know how, for if you did you could never have grown weary. ⁴Unless you hurt yourself you could never suffer in any way, for that is not God’s Will for His Son. ⁵Pain is not of Him, for He knows no attack and His peace surrounds you silently. ⁶God is very quiet, for there is no conflict in Him. ⁷Conflict is the root of all evil, for being blind it does not see whom it attacks. ⁸Yet it always attacks the Son of God, and the Son of God is you.
2. God’s Son is indeed in need of comfort, for he knows not what he does, believing his will is not his own. ²The Kingdom is his, and yet he wanders homeless. ³At home in God he is lonely, and amid all his brothers he is friendless. ⁴Would God let this be real, when He did not will to be alone Himself? ⁵And if your will is His it cannot be true of you, because it is not true of Him.” (ACIM, T-11.III.1:1–2:5)
We concluded this session with this inspiring blessing of Holy Spirit’s encouragement and confidence in our certain and happy inevitable success in achieving the transcendent goal of the Course:
Lessons 361 to 365: This holy instant would I give to You. Be You in charge. For I would follow You, certain that Your direction gives me peace.
1. And if I need a word to help me, He will give it to me. ²If I need a thought, that will He also give. ³And if I need but stillness and a tranquil, open mind, these are the gifts I will receive of Him. ⁴He is in charge by my request. ⁵And He will hear and answer me, because He speaks for God my Father and His holy Son. (ACIM, W-361-365.1:1-5)
This video was recorded on April 10, 2023.
(I highly recommend Lyn and Tim’s almost daily SFACIM zoom classes!)
Here are some favorite tunes that remind us of the folly of worry:
I like the metaphor of imagining our “Inner Jesus” smiling and waving at us to join him in his climate-controlled escalator going up Mount Everest as an alternative to ego’s worrisome martyr-laden assault on the mountain obstacle (made from countless mental molehills. How long will we insist on returning home the hard way? … Or even insisting that we can’t get home at all!
“How long, O Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin? ²Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children’s toys? ³How soon will you be ready to come home? ⁴Perhaps today? ⁵There is no sin. ⁶Creation is unchanged. ⁷Would you still hold return to Heaven back? ⁸How long, O holy Son of God, how long?” (ACIM, W-pII.4.5:1-8)
Here is a fun experiment using Dall-E 2 (from OpenAI) to generate a few concept images of a “smiling Jesus ascending Mount Everest in a climate-controlled escalator with a transparent cover” … not exactly what I was picturing, but it is fun to see what this new tech can muster in a few seconds!
It’s also a reminder that any symbol or metaphor can be greatly misunderstood and/or misapplied – What is it for? (ACIM, T-17.VI.2:2) The Course suggests that our material “selves” (and all matter, energy and form) are actually the metaphors for projections of the belief in separation, and that we literally are One pure, undifferentiated (non-dual) abstract awareness in the eternal Mind of our Creator. Our “Inner Jesus” (a.k.a. Holy Spirit or ACIM’s “author” via scribe Dr. Helen Schucman) has no correlation with the historical Jesus of the Christian bible, since the latter brings our spaceless, timeless, inseparable Identity into the dream of space, time and separation. This level confusion is systematically undone in ACIM by over 600 corrections of biblical misunderstandings; many of these corrections are detailed in Kenneth Wapnick’s prodigious and profound work, such as this audio program “The Bible from the Perspective of ‘A Course in Miracles’ “.