My thoughts* on ACIM Urtext Lesson 170, for June 18, 2024. There is no cruelty in God and none in me.
There is no cruelty in God and none in me.
* See Free Stock Photo, yet in everything we see have we not been taught that God is cruel?
1. No one attacks without intent to hurt.
²This can have no exception.
* I can be perceived as attacking and am accused of that by the ego=god mentality of those I engage with when I point out a negative attitude or a flaw in thinking. Only I know if I have stepped aside and allowed the Holy Spirit to direct me. And while I may retreat to give others space to believe as they choose I do not ‘run away’ or shirk my duties as a light on the Love that God offers His Son whoever or however he may think himself to be at this time.
³When you think that you attack in self-defense, you mean that to be cruel is protection; you are safe because of cruelty.
⁴You mean that you believe to hurt another brings you freedom.
⁵And you mean that to attack is to exchange the state in which you are for something better, safer, more secure from dangerous invasion and from fear.
2. How thoroughly insane is the idea that to defend from fear is to attack!
* Be CAREFUL how you read this. To read it as stated it says that defending ourselves from a place of fear is NOT to attack because it is INSANE. Right? We understand what was meant, that to defend ourselves from a place of fear brings about attack and that IS insane.
* Do you see how easy it is for the mind or the ego to trip us up in our understanding of truth. We do NOT need to find fault with individuals who translate but take responsibility OURSELVES for the interpretation of the words that Jesus is trying to share with us to show us our place with him at the Altar of God.
²For here is fear begot and fed with blood, to make it grow and swell and rage.
³And thus is fear protected, not escaped.
⁴Today we learn a lesson which can save you more delay and needless misery than you can possibly imagine.
⁵It is this:
⁶You make what you defend against, and by your own defense against it is it real and inescapable.
⁷Lay down your arms, and only then do you perceive it false.
* Do not wage war with what you feel is a fault in the world but be the light that brings God’s Love and blessing to his Son.
* The True Forgiveness of the Atonement acknowledges that only God IS and that His Son’s idea of separation is only confusion that led to addictions in behavior and thought that perpetuate the idea of separation. It tells the Son, NOT that he is wrong but mistaken and gently calls him back to His Father’s Embrace, Bounty, and Innocence.
3. It seems to be the enemy without that you attack.
* It seems to be the enemy OUTSIDE YOURSELF that you attack.
²Yet your defense sets up an enemy within; an alien thought at war with you, depriving you of peace, splitting your mind into two camps which seem wholly irreconcilable.
* Defense based on fear has you afraid of yourself and that which of you which IS ALL THAT IS.
³For love now has an “enemy,” an opposite; and fear, the alien, now needs your defense against the threat of what you really are.
4. If you consider carefully the means by which your fancied self-defense proceeds on its imagined way, you will perceive the premises on which the idea stands.
²First, it is obvious ideas must leave their source, for it is you who make attack, and must have first conceived of it.
* And this we have been taught is a false concept.
³Yet you attack outside yourself, and separate your mind from him who is to be attacked, with perfect faith the split you made is real.
* You do not see in the ‘other’ the Christ of which you are both a part.
5. Next, are the attributes of love bestowed upon its “enemy.”
* So you are actually loving fear, or think you are.
²For fear becomes your safety and protector of your peace, to which you turn for solace and escape from doubts about your strength, and hope of rest in dreamless quiet.
³And as love is shorn of what belongs to it and it alone, love is endowed with attributes of fear.
⁴For love would ask you lay down all defense as merely foolish.
⁵And your arms indeed would crumble into dust.
⁶For such they are.
6. With love as enemy, must cruelty become a god.
* Because cruelty is ‘needed’ to fend off fear.
²And gods demand that those who worship them obey their dictates, and refuse to question them.
³Harsh punishment is meted out relentlessly to those who ask if the demands are sensible or even sane.
* Yes, no questioning is allowed.
⁴It is their enemies who are unreasonable and insane, while they are always merciful and just.
* And, of course, righteously so.
7. Today we look upon this cruel god dispassionately.
* …or without emotion.
²And we note that though his lips are smeared with blood, and fire seems to flame from him, he is but made of stone.
³He can do nothing.
⁴We need not defy his power.
⁵He has none.
⁶And those who see in him their safety have no guardian, no strength to call upon in danger, and no mighty warrior to fight for them.
8. This moment can be terrible.
²But it can also be the time of your release from abject slavery.
³You make a choice, standing before this idol, seeing him exactly as he is.
⁴Will you restore to love what you have sought to wrest from it and lay before this mindless piece of stone?
* The stone being fear.
⁵Or will you make another idol to replace it?
⁶For the god of cruelty takes many forms.
* And when that in the physical world is seen through the eyes of fear idols are found everywhere as is fear and destruction.
⁷Another can be found.
* Any person, place, thing, idea, characteristic, etc. may become an idol, or something that the ego=god sees as a reason to justify first fear and then cruelty.
9. Yet do not think that fear is the escape from fear.
²Let us remember what the text has stressed about the obstacles to peace.
³The final one, the hardest to believe is nothing, and a seeming obstacle with the appearance of a solid block, impenetrable, fearful and beyond surmounting, is the fear of God Himself.
* Fear of God does not belong in our thought processes.
⁴Here is the basic premise which enthrones the thought of fear as god.
* “Psalm 103:13 As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.” This is an example of error on the part of the scribe and faulty or unclear communication. It should read, “As a father has compassion on his children, so God, Our Heavenly Father has compassion on those who REMEMBER HIM.”
⁵For fear is loved by those who worship it, and love appears to be invested now with cruelty.
* Do you SEE that in the two versions of Isaiah 103:13?
10. Where does the totally insane belief in gods of vengeance come from?
²Love has not confused its attributes with those of fear.
* Love is in and of God, alone.
³Yet must the worshippers of fear perceive their own confusion in fear’s “enemy”; its cruelty as now a part of love.
* Therein IS THE ILLUSION!
⁴And what becomes more fearful than the Heart of Love Itself?
⁵The blood appears to be upon His Lips; the fire comes from Him.
⁶And He is terrible above all else, cruel beyond conception, striking down all who acknowledge Him to be their God. * That capitol “G” has NO place in that sentence, nor do the pronouns deserve a capital. Same for the two previous sentences. YET, HEREIN, does the mind want to affirm the idea that the True God is someone to fear.
11. The choice you make today is certain.
²For you look for the last time upon this bit of carven stone you made, and call it god no longer.
³You have reached this place before, but you have chosen that this cruel god remain with you in still another form.
⁴And so the fear of God (*the True God) returned with you.
⁵This time you leave it there.
* We might do well to recognize fear for the god that we have made it within our minds.
⁶And you return to a new world, unburdened by its weight; beheld not in its sightless eyes, but in the vision that your choice restored to you.
* I have a bracelet that says, “Let your faith be greater than your fear.” I TRUST that the True God IS greater than any fear that the ego=god=fear mentality can come up with.
12. Now do your eyes belong to Christ, and He looks through them.
* For Christ IS YOU.
²Now your voice belongs to God and echoes His.
* Your voice belongs to God when you have laid fear aside or at least seen it as the “false god” that it MUST be if God is REAL.
³And now your heart remains at peace forever.
* Yes.
⁴You have chosen Him (*Christ, the Son of God) in place of idols, and your attributes, given by your (*TRUE) Creator, are restored to you at last.
⁵The Call for God is heard and answered.
⁶Now has fear made way for love, as God Himself replaces cruelty (*for Love, which always deserves a capitol when it is True).
13. Father, we are like You.
²No cruelty abides in us, for there is none in You.
³Your peace is ours.
⁴And we bless the world with what we have received from You alone (*ie. Peace, Love, Joy).
⁵We choose again, and make our choice for all our brothers, knowing they are one with us.
* Note the way to recognize our ONENESS, the only true form of non-duality from what I understand. Sadly, this ‘non-duality’ has become a sore spot amongst Course students and it does divide us in our worship of God, the Father and in our recognition of Christ.
⁶We bring them Your salvation as we have received it now.
⁷And we give thanks for them who render us complete.
⁸In them we see Your glory, and in them we find our peace.
⁹Holy are we because Your Holiness has set us free.
* This is God, the Father that we are speaking of.
* I feel comfortable taking the phrase “Your Holiness” to be both the Attributes of God and His Solidarity or Oneness/Completeness/Wholeness.
¹⁰And we give thanks.
¹¹Amen.
(ACIM, W-170.1:1–13:11)
Till next time, God bless, debi.
