Reflections 127 to 140

 

127/ The Wish for Something Else

1^st September 2022

 

Lesson 127: There is no love but God’s. (ACIM, W-127)

 

We learn today that love does not change. Love cannot judge. Love is perfect, certain and without conditions. It pervades everything and is everywhere. We are all a part of Infinite Love.

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This is not what we believe. Infinite Love is lost to us and yet we yearn for a never-ending love. We search for it is so many different ways. Love takes many forms but we can never keep it. We feel love is fleeting because, ultimately, death always puts an end to it.

 

A Course in Miracles repeatedly highlights what love is and what love is not. ACIM wants us to be happy because it knows that we are not. It teaches that there are no benefits in being fearful because it is a state that does not exist. Fear emanates from the ego and the ego is just a false belief.

 

The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is “Know thyself.” There is nothing else to seek. Everyone is looking for himself and for the power and glory he thinks he has lost. Whenever you are with anyone, you have another opportunity to find them. (ACIM, T-8.III.5:1-4)

 

Jesus taught this in his lifetime and this is his teaching now. He says that every encounter is another chance to love. This is the simplicity of A Course in Miracles’ message. See love in another person and we see that love in ourselves. See a fault in another person and we see that fault in ourselves.

 

The wish for something else is a delusion of the ego. We can’t change what God created but we can, and do, see past it. Actually, we are blind to it. Love is right here now but only a still mind understands that this is so.

 

Christian Sundberg has pre-birth memories of the love that we are. This is a state so completely different to anything we experience in a body that it takes someone just like Christian to explain this to us. He says that we are unconditionally loved and that to even partially experience this memory would be to yearn for its exisistence. One interview with Christian was in last year’s reflections, on 22^nd August 2021. The interview today is with Lee Witting and NDE Radio.

 

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128/ Achieving a Peaceful World

2nd September 2022

 

Lesson 128: The world I see holds nothing that I want. (ACIM, W-128)

 

The lesson today is unequivocal. Nothing of form can give us happiness. The world is form and it is our attachment to it that binds us. Only the formless can give us certainty.

 

A Course in Miracles is formlessness in action. We buy the book and we read the words, but the real meaning is beyond words. The real meaning has nothing to do with what’s on the page in front of us. It has everything to do with what is within us.

 

The acceptance of the above is therefore a denial of everything that the world teaches us. This is our lesson for the day. Below are some lines that might help to explain this. Jesus tells us that the world arises in the mind. If we put peace into our minds, we can have a peaceful world.

 

I am come as a light into a world that does deny itself everything. It does this simply by dissociating itself from everything. It is therefore an illusion of isolation, maintained by fear of the same loneliness that is its illusion. (ACIM, T-8.IV.2:1-3)

 

The world must therefore despise and reject me, because the world is the belief that love is impossible. If you will accept the fact that I am with you, you are denying the world and accepting God. My will is His, and your decision to hear me is the decision to hear His Voice and abide in His Will. (ACIM, T-8.IV.3:7-9)

 

My decision cannot overcome yours, because yours is as powerful as mine. If it were not so the Sons of God would be unequal. All things are possible through our joint decision, but mine alone cannot help you. Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it. I cannot will what God does not will. (ACIM, T-8.IV.5:9-13)

 

Everything we do is down to us. Jesus is showing us exactly what we have to do to overcome the world. He overcame it through love and forgiveness, and this is what he wants us to do too.

 

Do you not think the world needs peace as much as you do? Do you not want to give it to the world as much as you want to receive it? For unless you do, you will not receive it. (ACIM, T-8.IV.4:1-3)

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129/ Deluded and Divided

3rd September 2022

 

Lesson 129: Beyond this world there is a world I want. (ACIM, W-129)

 

To identify with this lesson, we would have had to have reached a point where we are questioning our lives. Pain no doubt would have brought us here. Without pain, we can have no reference point.

 

This world is a world of time. The world beyond it is a world of timelessness. Our lives do not have to change to experience the timeless. We are told we merely continue as we are, but without the constant chatter in the mind that puts pressure on us to get somewhere and do something.

 

What a mind is like without this chatter can only be experienced. A Course in Miracles tells us it is an experience of wholeness and interconnection. The mind sees everyone and everything as part of itself. This experience might be described as unlimited joy, complete peace and instant knowing.

 

Jesus never identifies himself as the messenger of A Course in Miracles, but we can. His words tell us that, to really understand his message, we have to join with his mind. Love joins with love.

 

Alone we can do nothing, but together our minds fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts. By not being separate, the Mind of God is established in ours and as ours. This Mind is invincible because it is undivided. (ACIM, T-8.V.1:6-8)

 

Jesus tells us that when our minds unite with his, they do so without the ego. The ego can never, and will never, experience limitless love. It is gone, just like water washes away a speck of dust. Truth is beyond the ego. The ego symbolises flesh and bone. Truth has no boundaries, and no division.

 

Jesus sees the mind of the ego as deluded and divided. The oneness of God is his primary message throughout the whole of A Course in Miracles. Jesus wants us to be aware that the ego is showing us a world of separation and we do not have to accept this.  The ego is subterfuge and illusion combined together. The only thing we need to accept fully is our ability to think with the Holy Spirit.

 

The Holy Spirit has one direction for all minds, and the one He taught me is yours. Let us not lose sight of His direction through illusions, for only illusions of another direction can obscure the one for which God’s Voice speaks in all of us. (ACIM, T-8.V.6:2-3)

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130/ A Ticket Home

4th September 2022

 

Lesson 130: It is impossible to see two worlds. (ACIM, W-130)

 

The lesson today says we see what we value. It also tells us that what we fear we cannot see. In fact, we learn that fear makes everything we do see. The world we see is based on fear and not on love.

 

Love is fear’s enemy. This is the same as saying that the Holy Spirit is the enemy of the ego. Love, however, can have no enemy. It does not know that fear exists. Love just is.

 

A Course in Miracles is the choice between fear and love. It is choice between a world of terror and a world of joy. It is the choice between the world of the ego and the world of the Holy Spirit.

 

Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer. (ACIM, T-8.VI.1:5)

 

You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true. (ACIM, T-8.VI.2:2-3)

 

A Course in Miracles tells us that God did not create the world that we see. The world arises through the thoughts that we think. It also tells us that God plays no part in suffering - we just make our own.  We are all an aspect of God, we are what God Is and we can only be this. When we think otherwise, it means we are moving away from our isness to a place that does not exist.

 

To simply be reflects the complete understanding of our connection to God. To do something requires effort. It requires thought. When our minds get caught up with all the things we have to get done, we miss the present moment. It disappears with the doing.

 

Beingness is in all of us; it is not in any one of us alone. We simply are. A Course in Miracles tells us there is no separation. Beingness is our ticket home. It is a ticket with no return

 

The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge of where you are always, and what you are forever. It is a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed. Truth can only be experienced. It cannot be described and it cannot be explained. (ACIM, T-8.VI.9:6-9) 

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131/ The Path to Happiness

5th September 2022

 

Lesson 131: No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth. (ACIM, W-131)

 

A Course in Miracles tells us that the truth is Heaven. Heaven is here, all about us and within us. Heaven is what we are, without any conditions. It is not a place, just a state of mind.

 

The lesson today says that failure to find Heaven is guaranteed if we look in the wrong places. Indeed, we will find variations of hell instead and this is apparent when we look around us. In fact, A Course in Miracles tells us that hell does not exist - we just make it. Hell is just another state of mind.

 

That is why we are here - to find a way of changing hell into Heaven.

 

A Course in Miracles tells us the search for Heaven begins and ends in the mind. The body plays no part, except by being able to express what the mind is thinking. The body has no awareness of Heaven; it has no idea what Heaven is. Only the mind knows what Heaven is. The truth of what we are is found in the quiet of the mind.

 

When you equate yourself with a body you will always experience depression. When a child of God thinks of himself in this way he is belittling himself, and seeing his brothers as similarly belittled. Since he can find himself only in them, he has cut himself off from salvation. (ACIM, T-8.VII.1:6-8)

 

A Course in Miracles simply changes our perception. It gives us the mind training in order to see things as they are.  It tells us that anything the ego does fosters attack, promotes separation and makes a hell out of the Heaven. Anything that the Holy Spirit does creates communication and promotes a joining. The Holy Spirit sees past the body to the peace that is everywhere.

 

If you use the body for attack, it is harmful to you. If you use it only to reach the minds of those who believe they are bodies, and teach them through the body that this is not so, you will understand the power of the mind that is in you. (ACIM, T-8.VII.3:1-2)

 

The path to happiness is in the mind. This is where we find our own Heaven and hell. All 365 lessons are a way of learning this and it is only by applying them that we are able to know that this is true.

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132/ Help and Healing

6th September 2022

 

Lesson 132: I loose the world from all I thought it was. (ACIM, W-132)

 

The lesson today contains the following three truths.

 

• ·         There is no world. The world is just a projection from the mind.

 

• ·          We are exactly as God created us. We are eternal beings of light.

 

• ·        To be happy, we need to release the world. This renders unhappiness obsolete.

 

The above is the main focus of what A Course in Miracles is teaching us. We are dreaming this world. The reality is we never left our Source. It is quite within our powers to awaken to this memory.

 

We have two choices. We can keep our belief in this world or we can withdraw our belief about this world. One relies solely on our identity as a body; the other relies solely on identifying as spirit.

 

A Course in Miracles tells us we suffer by identifying as a body. The body can never join but minds can. Our minds can connect without judgement and without bias, and this can only bring us peace.

 

Removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence helps us to do this. The mind can then use the body calmly and without attack. This is the function of the Holy Spirit and this is the healing of the mind.

 

Help and healing are the natural outcome of having a relationship with the Holy Spirit. Our perception is corrected. The mind doesn’t distort what it sees through the bias of the ego.

 

All mind is whole, and the belief that part of it is physical, or not mind, is a fragmented or sick interpretation. Mind cannot be made physical, but it can be made manifest through the physical if it uses the body to go beyond itself. (ACIM, T-8.VII.10:3-4)

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133/ The Self that We Are

7th September 2022

 

Lesson 133: I will not value what is valueless. (ACIM, W-133)

 

The lesson today tells us that Heaven is reached with empty hands and open minds. It tells us that nothing brings everything. We should not value what the world perceives as important.

 

When we really desire something - when we feel that not to have it is wrecking our lives - we have lost sight of who we are. We are choosing what is valueless.  What is valuable is right here with us now. The valuable is nowhere else. The valuable cannot be attained at some later date.

 

The ego in the mind plays terrible tricks on us. It labels us as a body, meaning that we feel loss very strongly. The ego taunts us mercilessly, and we react accordingly. We do whatever we can to get what we want, and we get what we wants regardless of other people’s feelings.

 

A Course in Miracles is about coming back to the present moment. It is about returning to sanity. ACIM tells us that the ego is incapable of knowing what we want and how we should feel. Our only certainty arises through the Holy Spirit who continually guides us by giving us prompts.

 

The Holy Spirit’s Voice is as loud as your willingness to listen. It cannot be louder without violating your freedom of choice, which the Holy Spirit seeks to restore, never to undermine. (ACIM, T-8.VIII.8:7-8)

 

By doing the Workbook, we can begin to get a feel for the Holy Spirit’s Voice. Arising in the mind, it is certain and guarantees our safety. It provides exactly what we want and when we need it. It has nothing to do with desire. It simply comes to us through our willingness to listen.

 

A Course in Miracles asks only that we heal our split mind. It asks that we stop perceiving ourselves as being little. Our greatness lies far beyond the body and completely away from the thinking of the ego. It sits silently wherever we are, quietly waiting and patiently listening.

 

The Self that we are knows no limits. The Self that we are has nothing to do with the world. We are not a body or an ego, but we are life and we are spirit. This is the Self. The Self that we are brings us everything. Nothing else is important because nothing else actually exists.

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134/ Seeing Past the Veil

8th September 2022

 

Lesson 134: Let me perceive forgiveness as it is. (ACIM, W-134)

 

The lesson today gives us these facts.

 

• ·       Truth needs no forgiveness. We see it as it is, not as it is not.

 

• ·        Sin needs no forgiveness because sin does not exist. Sin is an illusion of the mind.

 

• ·        Mistakes just need to be corrected. Forgiveness is the healing of the mind.

 

Jesus tells us that we can only be at peace when we are awake.

 

I said before that the Holy Spirit is the Answer. He is the Answer to everything, because He knows what the answer to everything is. The ego does not know what a real question is, although it asks an endless number. (ACIM, T-8.IX.1:1-3)

 

I give you no limits because God lays none upon you. When you limit yourself we are not of one mind, and that is sickness. Yet sickness is not of the body, but of the mind. All forms of sickness are signs that the mind is split, and does not accept a unified purpose. (ACIM, T-8.IX.8:4-7)

 

Jesus is asking us to share our oneness. He wants us to see past the veil and understand that all minds are one. Nothing needs to be forgiven. Everything is perfect as it is.

 

Akerke Muratova describes her own experience of perfection when she awakened to this oneness. Originally from Kazakhstan, and still only twenty four at the time of the interview, she talks of her pre-birth memories and her out of body experiences. Despite a difficult start to life, she has now integrated these experiences and lives in Australia. The interview is with Lee Witting and NDE Radio.

 

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135/ Questions that Are Asked

9th September 2022

 

Lesson 135: If I defend myself I am attacked. (ACIM, W-135)

 

A Course in Miracles says that the body needs no defence. If we defend the body we have attacked the mind. Essentially, we are defending illusions. We are making the unreal real.

 

It is very clear that the body seems real. Cut ourselves and it hurts. However, what is less clear is the way in which the mind thinks. It is the split in the mind that hurts. We plan everything from a past perspective, in the hope that it influences our future. This means that what is present is lost to us.

 

We do not know what we are. We think we are something with a past and a future. We have forgotten that we are this present moment. We are the now.

 

You do not recognize the enormous waste of energy you expend in denying truth. What would you say of someone who persists in attempting the impossible, believing that to achieve it is to succeed? The belief that you must have the impossible in order to be happy is totally at variance with the principle of creation. (ACIM, T-9.I.11:1-3)

 

Our past and future, then, has many questions, none of which can be answered. Each question just leads to another. We are asking for nothing, and nothing can affect what we really are. What we are knows only wholeness, and wholeness is what we are.

 

A Course in Miracles tells us we do not understand the enormous waste of energy that we expend in denying the truth. We are attempting the impossible. All we have to do is just to accept what is now. We don’t have to believe in anything else.

 

We ask so many questions but they can’t be answered. The questions that we ask are lost in time. The Answer, it seems, is with us always. Reality needs no questions. We are it and it is us.

 

Reality is everything, and you have everything because you are real. You cannot make the unreal because the absence of reality is fearful, and fear cannot be created. As long as you believe that fear is possible, you will not create. Opposing orders of reality make reality meaningless, and reality is meaning. (ACIM, T-9.I.13:3-6)

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136/ The Escape from Fear

10th September 2022

 

Lesson 136: Sickness is a defense against the truth. (ACIM, W-136)

 

The lesson today tells us that everything that emanates from God is quite apart from time. It tells us that truth is quite unalterable. It tells us that time is basically one big, fat illusion.

 

The passage of time is the source of all our suffering. Sickness is a part of that suffering. When time stops, sickness stops - the mind is calm. Start time again and the mind starts again, like the revving of an engine.

 

Jesus tells us that the purpose of A Course in Miracles is the escape from fear. Fear is the source of everything that we don’t like. Pain and suffering, for example, arise out of fear. The separate mind makes this fear because fear is a product of a split mind.

 

Fear cannot be found in a mind that is healed. That is why each lesson in the Workbook is a lesson in forgiveness. We are forgiving ourselves for the pain that our minds are making, and for the pain that we are projecting on to others. See fear in another person and we see fear in ourselves; see love in another person and we see love in ourselves.

 

Jesus knows that we are capable of knowing only love because that is what he experienced in his life. The ego is the source of fear and he overcame the ego. He only saw the love of the Holy Spirit in everyone, and he is spreading that love to us.

 

You will not know the trust I have in you unless you extend it. You will not trust the guidance of the Holy Spirit, or believe that it is for you unless you hear it in others. It must be for your brother because it is for you. Would God have created a Voice for you alone? (ACIM, T-9.II.6:7-10)

 

The escape from fear arises only with what we witness in others. The mind always has just two choices: to see with love or to see with fear. Jesus knew this, and Jesus wants us to know this too.

 

I love you for the truth in you, as God does. Your deceptions may deceive you, but they cannot deceive me. Knowing what you are, I cannot doubt you. I hear only the Holy Spirit in you, Who speaks to me through you. (ACIM, T-9.II.7:1-4)

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137/ Undoing Condemnation

11th September 2022

 

Lesson 137: When I am healed I am not healed alone. (ACIM, W-137)

 

The premise of A Course in Miracles is that we are one. It focuses on healing the mind of duality. It says that an unhealed mind sees itself as separate and alone; a healed mind knows only its oneness.

 

The lesson today is just another step in showing us that we have two choices. We have sickness or we have health; we have illusions or the truth. Forgiveness cancels out the first of both choices - in other words, everything that is not real; Atonement gives us the second - in other words, everything that is real. The mind is then healed. It is a mind that knows the truth.

 

Everything comes down to the mind. It comes down to a simple choice between the ego and the Holy Spirit. Whether we are happy or sad is all decided by how we think and what we do with that thinking. It is decided by how we perceive each other.

 

It is not up to you to change your brother, but merely to accept him as he is. His errors do not come from the truth that is in him, and only this truth is yours. His errors cannot change this, and can have no effect at all on the truth in you. To perceive errors in anyone, and to react to them as if they were real, is to make them real to you. (ACIM, T-9.III.6:4-7)

 

It is the awareness of the Holy Spirit within our minds that undoes what the ego loves. The Holy Spirit does not know error. It cannot see error in others like the ego can. When we look with the Holy Spirit, it means seeing wholeness everywhere. There really is nothing else to see.

 

This is a silent practice. We don’t have to preach. We don’t have to convince anyone of anything. Peace just moves from one mind to another because the Holy Spirit is peace.

 

A Course in Miracles is therefore an education in relationship. It guides us how to relate to each other through a mind at peace. It is a continual affirmation of everything the ego is not. It is the undoing of condemnation, both in our own mind and in the minds of others.

 

It all comes down to acceptance. We can accept what is true in each other or we can accept what is false. There is only this, and this decision defines A Course in Miracles.

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138/ Reality Cannot Change

12th September 2022

 

Lesson 138: Heaven is the decision I must make. (ACIM, W-138)

 

A Course in Miracles tells us that only Heaven exists. The world might reflect a multitude of different heavens and hells, but ACIM tells us there is only one truth. Truth is found in Heaven, as is love and light. They are all the same. What is real can have no opposite.

 

Heaven has to be recognized. It is the recognition of our I-am-ness. It is the release of everything that shades it. It is the dawning of reality without an opposite.

 

Nothing can prepare us for this except a still mind. Stillness only arises when fear has left. It might come when the world has exploded around us and the dust has settled. Or it might arise slowly, over a period of time, as obstructions slowly drop away.

 

Jesus guides us on a journey to clarity that actually takes us nowhere. He teaches us how to remove the blocks which make us think that Heaven is a place we go to when we die. Jesus tells us that Heaven doesn’t have to be earned. Heaven is just the awareness of perfect oneness.

 

Jesus teaches that our fear of disconnection from this oneness is what has to be forgiven.

 

We do not know how to do this. The Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit looks past all error and keeps it unreal in our minds. The Holy Spirit knows exactly where Heaven is. The Holy Spirit knows that it is within us, around us, above us and below us. We have just fallen asleep to it.

 

This means that we have just fallen asleep to the fact that love has no opposite.

 

Truth cannot be brought to illusion. Light cannot be brought to darkness. Jesus tells us that our only choice is to accept what is real. Our only choice is to accept that reality cannot change.

 

Behold, my child, reality is here. It belongs to you and me and God, and is perfectly satisfying to all of Us. Only this awareness heals, because it is the awareness of truth. (ACIM, T-9.IV.12:1-3)

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139/ The Light in the Mind

13th September 2022

 

Lesson 139: I will accept the Atonement for myself. (ACIM, W-139)

 

Accepting the Atonement means we heal the mind. It is the end of choice. It means we know who we are and what we are, without question.

 

To understand this, we have to become like Jesus. It means giving every choice to the Holy Spirit. Choice isn’t necessary. Jesus knew exactly what to do as any situation arose. We can be exactly like this too.

 

A Course in Miracles talks about the unhealed healer. This is where the ego comes into the equation. ACIM tells us that true healing arises in the present moment where the ego is not. Here lies clarity and the space for healing to flow. In the present moment, we find the right words and the right actions at exactly the right time.

 

“Now” has no meaning to the ego. The present merely reminds it of past hurts, and it reacts to the present as if it were the past. The ego cannot tolerate release from the past, and although the past is over, the ego tries to preserve its image by responding as if it were the present. It dictates your reactions to those you meet in the present from a past reference point, obscuring their present reality. (ACIM, T-13.IV.5:1-4)

 

To work with the Holy Spirit means doing the Workbook. We learn to develop trust.

 

By developing trust, we learn to see the Holy Spirit everywhere just like Jesus did. This means we see only the Holy Spirit in each other, regardless of what is being done to us.

 

And this is the Irony of A Course in Miracles. It teaches that nothing is being done to us - we are just doing it to ourselves.  Jesus continually stresses this point and tells us that the light in the mind is our healer. This is the Holy Spirit. When we understand this, then the mind is healed.

 

This course offers a very direct and a very simple learning situation, and provides the Guide Who tells you what to do. If you do it, you will see that it works. Its results are more convincing that its words. They will convince you that the words are true. (ACIM, T-9.V.9:1-4)

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140/ Wholeness Is Indivisible

14th September 2022

 

Lesson 140: Only Salvation can be said to cure. (ACIM, W-140)

 

The lesson today is really about seeking a cure for illusions.

 

Salvation is therefore where we become what we are. This is a state so different to anything that the ego might believe that the ego tells us we could never know it. It feels impossible.

 

A Course in Miracles provides the solution. It introduces us to the Holy Spirit who can see past the illusions of the ego. The study of ACIM is literally about allowing the ego to disappear. The Holy Spirit dismisses it, looks past it and allows us to rise above it.

 

The Holy Spirit sees no merit in anything that the ego needs us to do. The Holy Spirit does not want us to be busy doing. It wants us to find clarity and stillness. This stillness is found within a Mind that is bigger than anything we could have ever imagined. It is vast and alive, infinite and pure.

 

The Holy Spirit teaches us that stillness is found within the Mind of God.

 

Eternity is one time, its only dimension being “always”. This cannot mean anything to you until you remember God’s open Arms, and finally know His open Mind. Like Him, you are “always”; in His Mind and with a mind like His. (ACIM, T-9.VI.7:1-3)

 

The ego hates to read this. It sees us as separate body with a mind within that body. It sees eternity only as the body’s lifespan. We live and we die, and in this there can be no argument.

 

The Holy Spirit knows that wholeness is indivisible. It knows that all minds are one. We then begin to see this in each other, and this becomes the key to knowing where our wholeness lies.

 

You can know yourself only as God knows His Son, for knowledge is shared with God. When you awake in Him you will know your magnitude by accepting His limitlessness as yours. But meanwhile you will judge it as you judge your brother’s, and will accept it as you accept his. (ACIM, T-9.VI.4:7-9)