My thoughts* on ACIM Workbook Lesson 195, for July 13, 2024. Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
* Love as the world of ego sees it and as God KNOWS it are two different things.
1. Gratitude is a lesson hard to learn for those who look upon the world amiss.
²The most that they can do is see themselves as better off than others.
³And they try to be content because another seems to suffer more than they.
⁴How pitiful and deprecating are such thoughts!
⁵For who has cause for thanks while others have less cause?
⁶And who could suffer less because he sees another suffer more?
⁷Your gratitude is due to Him alone Who made all cause of sorrow disappear throughout the world.
* This message hits me powerfully today. I lost everything over and over and had to decide if I was going to give thanks by recognizing God’s Reality of Love or be angry. I will be forever grateful to that four year old little girl who chose love.
* I see the results of those who deny gratitude all around me. And it is heart-breaking.
* Do you think I am being boastful? I am not. But that is how the ego=god mentality has set us up to see someone who speaks like me.
2. It is insane to offer thanks because of suffering.
²But it is equally insane to fail in gratitude to One Who offers you the certain means whereby all pain is healed, and suffering replaced with laughter and with happiness.
³Nor could the even partly sane refuse to take the steps which He directs, and follow in the way He sets before them, to escape a prison that they thought contained no door to the deliverance they now perceive.
3. Your brother is your “enemy” because you see in him the rival for your peace; a plunderer who takes his joy from you, and leaves you nothing but a black despair so bitter and relentless that there is no hope remaining.
* This is because you see others as taking from you continually and not realizing that all things come from God and that it is to Him your thanks are due.
²Now is vengeance all there is to wish for.
³Now can you but try to bring him down to lie in death with you, as useless as yourself; as little left within his grasping fingers as in yours.
* Yep, that is what I can look forward to if I stay committed to putting something together that was never broken in the first place. It is interesting how I say this. I am speaking of my trying to engage with a world in form that is hell bent on being separated from God. Unreturned calls and giving me a cross that was probably obtained to ward off the teachings I had try to share!??? I can accept what is and loss of face is NOT what will take me down. Loss of gratitude to God will.
* This is something that “The Whole Truth” taught me. How big “loss of face” is among those who must live in ego. And that everyone lies when in ego=god mentality. They must. Life demands it.
* Going by the way that Ken taught the Course I was of a mind that we should teach our children how to lie. Seriously, you might have been watching my writings when I taught that. But the ego’s teachings of the Course are not the meaning that Jesus had in mind when he brought it to us.
4. You do not offer God your gratitude because your brother is more slave than you, nor could you sanely be enraged if he seems freer.
²Love makes no comparisons. ****WONDERFUL CONTEMPLATION!!!
³And gratitude can only be sincere if it be joined to love.
⁴We offer thanks to God our Father that in us all things will find their freedom.
* Because in the witness of the Atonement that is the only thing that they could be.
⁵It will never be that some are loosed while others still are bound.
* The Atonement does give you what is outside the “death of the world of ego” because it recognizes God, sees His Son, and knows these things by the witness and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
⁶For who can bargain in the name of love?
5. Therefore give thanks, but in sincerity.
²And let your gratitude make room for all who will escape with you; the sick, the weak, the needy and afraid, and those who mourn a seeming loss or feel apparent pain, who suffer cold or hunger, or who walk the way of hatred and the path of death.
³All these go with you.
* So, here is where the “lie” comes in. I must walk among humanity, being polite and calm, not showing too much joy because I will rile the egos of those who feel that others can be freer and therefore worthy of their disdain/dislike.
* dis·dain [disˈdān] noun, the feeling that someone or something is unworthy of one’s consideration or respect; contempt: her upper lip curled in disdain” · “an aristocratic disdain for manual labor” consider to be unworthy of one’s consideration: “gamblers disdain four-horse races” refuse or reject (something) out of feelings of pride or superiority:”she remained standing, pointedly disdaining his invitation to sit down” · “he disdained to discuss the matter further”
* In other words, don’t let your light shine too bright. Which turns out to be a form of lying but can help us receive less harm from the ego-ruled world.
⁴Let us not compare ourselves with them, for thus we split them off from our awareness of the unity we share with them, as they must share with us.
* For me, THIS is the reason that I understand that I cannot “see this world that ego has made” as REAL any longer. To do so would send me over the edge. Instead, I fall back gently into the Arms of God and KNOW that He will take care of things and that I do not even have to worry about what that looks like.
6. We thank our Father for one thing alone; that we are separate from no living thing, and therefore one with Him.
²And we rejoice that no exceptions ever can be made which would reduce our wholeness, nor impair or change our function to complete the One Who is Himself completion.
³We give thanks for every living thing, for otherwise we offer thanks for nothing, and we fail to recognize the gifts of God to us.
* I cannot give thanks for those, or that more correctly, which seeks to destroy EVERYTHING in its path, but I can give thanks that God IS and that every part of the Consciousness of Christ has the ability to understand this once they are willing to.
7. Then let our brothers lean their tired heads against our shoulders as they rest a while.
* THIS does NOT happen in the world of form.
* Yet, in our understanding that God IS we hold the space for others to remember themselves and come Home where we have always been.
²We offer thanks for them.
* ONLY in their true form is this thanks appropriate. Though I can look on the challenges of my life and be grateful it helped me open my eyes I am still speaking of something that was NEVER possible.
³For if we can direct them to the peace that we would find, the way is opening at last to us.
* This is a “figure of speech” or a ‘poetic license” rather than truth because all that we can do is stand in our own truth and know that God IS. We cannot do this or give it to another.
⁴An ancient door is swinging free again; a long forgotten Word re-echoes in our memory, and gathers clarity as we are willing once again to hear.
8. Walk, then, in gratitude the way of love.
* Walk in gratitude that all will find their place in God at the time of their choosing.
* Jesus makes it clear that love is manifest here in forgiveness of ALL and gratitude is toward God NOT toward those who are caught in ego mentality.
²For hatred is forgotten when we lay comparisons aside.
* In the Atonement we are all one. And no one is lacking anything that the Father IS.
* What fallows is misinterpretation of what Jesus was bring to us because those who brought it to us did NOT understand the Atonement.
³What more remains as obstacles to peace?
⁴The fear of God is now undone at last, and we forgive without comparing.
⁵Thus we cannot choose to overlook some things, and yet retain some other things still locked away as “sins.”
⁶When your forgiveness is complete you will have total gratitude, for you will see that everything has earned the right to love by being loving, even as your Self.
* You CANNOT do this while “in ego.”
9. Today we learn to think of gratitude in place of anger, malice and revenge.
* If we do not know the Atonement our gratitude is misplaced and only a mockery to God and a bowing down to the ego manifested world.
²We have been given everything.
* IN THE ATONEMENT, YES.
³If we refuse to recognize it, we are not entitled therefore to our bitterness, and to a self-perception which regards us in a place of merciless pursuit, where we are badgered ceaselessly, and pushed about without a thought or care for us or for our future.
* Note the thick layer of guilt this comment applies. It is a terrific piece of sabotage to the teachings of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And binds us so that we may NEVER be WORTHY of understanding the simple truth of Salvation.
⁴Gratitude becomes the single thought we substitute for these insane perceptions.
⁵God has cared for us, and calls us Son.
* Hidden under a “sliver” of truth. It is gratitude to God for the Atonement that the WHOLE Sonship of Christ will share in that blesses us.
⁶Can there be more than this?
10. Our gratitude will pave the way to Him, and shorten our learning time by more than you could ever dream of.
* Note that it is written that Gratitude can come before acknowledging Him and in acknowledging Him, He IS there.
* But it sure sounds pretty, I have to give them that.
²Gratitude goes hand in hand with love, and where one is the other must be found.
* Where GOD IS GRATITUDE WILL BE FOUND and ONLY THERE IS LOVE.
³For gratitude is but an aspect of the Love which is the Source of all creation.
⁴God gives thanks to you, His Son, for being what you are; His Own completion and the Source of love, along with Him.
* This may be but let us know Him and accept Him first.
⁵Your gratitude to Him is one with His to you.
⁶For love can walk no road except the way of gratitude, and thus we go who walk the way to God.
(ACIM, W-195.1:1–10:6)
Till next time, God bless, debi.
