A Course In Miracles – San Jose Karl J Vidt, ACIM Student/Teacher

Monthly Archives: December 2016

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ACIM T-16.I True Empathy

December 27, 2016 7:30 pm ⋅

December 27, 2016

Empathy is a concept we often misunderstand and thus misuse.  What is your understanding of empathy?  Is it truly helpful?  Does it help another to rise to their strength in Oneness?  Or does it keep them in a pattern of suffering?  A teacher of mine once described the difference between empathy and sympathy as follows.  Suppose I come across one who has fallen into a deep pit and cannot climb out.  They perhaps have lost hope of finding a way out and are in despair.  How do I best help them?  One alternative is to show sympathy for them and jump in the pit to comfort them.  Then we are both trapped in the pit unable to get out.  The alternative is to stay out of the pit and find a way to help them climb out or go and find help and return to stay near them and guide the help to them so they can be released from the pit.  We don’t join this one in their suffering, yet find a truly helpful solution.  The Course teaches this about our understanding of empathy.

To empathize does not mean to join in suffering, for that is what you must refuse to understand.  That is the ego’s interpretation of empathy, and is always used to form a special relationship in which the suffering is shared.  The capacity to empathize is very useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Spirit use it in Its way.  Spirit’s way is very different.  Spirt does not understand suffering, and would have you teach it is not understandable.  When Spirit relates through you, Spirit does not relate through your ego to another ego.  Spirit does not join in pain, understanding that healing pain is not accomplished by delusional attempts to enter into it, and lighten it by sharing the delusion.   T-16.I.1:1-7

We do nothing truly helpful by sharing with another in the delusion of suffering. This sister or brother who has believed they are suffering is calling out for help.  How can we be truly helpful?  The Course has taught us to be vigilant for the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  First, we must stop and listen with our spirit ears and hear a true cry for help and realize there is a more helpful way to respond if we seek Spirit’s guidance.  Our egoic thought system rooted in our beliefs about our past would have us jump in the pit with the one suffering and find ourselves just as trapped as they are.  Is that truly helpful?  This makes our relationship with this one a “special relationship.”  We’ve joined in the illusion of suffering.  There is a better way.  It is rooted in the power of love.

The meaning of love is lost in any relationship that looks to weakness, and hopes to find love there.  The power of love, which is its meaning, lies in the strength of the One that hovers over it and blesses it silently by enveloping it in healing wings.  Let this be, and do not try to substitute your egoic “miracle” for this.   T-16.I.6:1-3

Strength and true helpfulness always comes from love as guided by Spirit which is always within us.  No exceptions.  We tap into this strength as we are willing to allow our minds to be guided by Spirit.  How do we begin practicing this?  Focus your mind only on this:

  • I am not alone, and I would not intrude the past upon my Guest.
  • I have invited My Guest, and My Guest is here.
  • I need do nothing except not to interfere.

 True empathy is of the One Who knows what it is.  You will learn Spirit’s interpretation of it if you let Spirit use your capacity for strength, and not for weakness.  Spirit will not desert you, but be sure that you desert not Spirit.  Humility is strength in this sense only; that to recognize and accept the fact that you do not know is to recognize and accept the fact that Spirit does know.  You are not sure that Spirit will do Its part, because you have never yet done yours completely.  You cannot know how to respond to what you do not understand.  Be tempted not in this, and yield not to the ego’s triumphant use of empathy for its glory.   T-16.I.4:1-7

Place your trust in the Higher Holy Spirit Self within you who will guide you in everything as you allow.  No real harm can come to you or anyone else when we rely on the strength of the love within us that rises from the awareness of Spirit within us and the remembrance of who and what we really are.  Step into that awareness and be truly helpful through the practice of true empathy.

Posted in: ACIM Ch. 16 - The Forgiveness of Illusion

ACIM T-15.XI Christmas As the End of Sacrifice

December 20, 2016 7:30 pm ⋅

December 20, 2016

The season of Christmas has many different meanings for each of us.  Let us think, for a moment, that the Christ child being born into this temporal world symbolizes our innocence being reborn into our minds that have denied our innocence in the belief in separation.  Christmas symbolizes our reawakening to our true nature, innocent, complete and whole.  Our true nature is not affected by the world.  Our true nature is unchangeable.  Our awareness of our true nature may only be temporarily blocked by our belief in separation.  May we be willing again and again, as many times as it takes, to release our rigid belief in that separate identity we made. And open ourselves to the awareness of the Divine being we truly are in Oneness.  We must simply release the need for the world outside us to be at peace before we recognize the Divine peace within us.  The world around us has only one Holy purpose – to guide us to the awakening of the Divine essence of peace and love that eternally dwells within us.  This awakening is the meaning of Christmas.  Let this be the meaning of Christmas you hold this year.

We seek love, real unconditional love.  We seek love that has no judgement, that accepts us just as we are.  The love and peace that always dwells within us is such a love.  It does not see our shortcomings.  It sees us as we really are, the Divine essence in which we are created.  There can be nothing but love and peace there once we let go of everything else we have believed about ourselves.  The holy instant arises in our mind when we open our minds to this love and peace within us.

In the holy instant the condition of love is met, for minds are joined without the body’s interference, and where there is communication there is peace.  The Prince of Peace was born to re-establish the condition of love by teaching that communication remains unbroken even if the body is destroyed, provided that you see not the body as the necessary means of communication.  And if you understand this lesson, you will realize that to sacrifice the body is to sacrifice nothing, and communication, which must be of the mind, cannot be sacrificed.  Where, then, is sacrifice?  The lesson I was born to teach, and still would teach to all my brothers and sisters, is that sacrifice is nowhere and love is everywhere.  For communication embraces everything, and in the peace it re-establishes, love comes of itself.   T-15.XI.7:1-6

No longer need we sacrifice total love and peace and the awareness of who we really are for love and peace.  We need simply release the limitations we have placed in our minds and look within to the love and peace already there in Oneness.

Let no despair darken the joy of Christmas, for the time of the Christ Spirit is meaningless apart from joy.  Let us join in celebrating peace by demanding no sacrifice of anyone, for so we offer others the love they offer us.  What can be more joyous than to perceive we are deprived of nothing?  Such is the message of the time of Christmas.  Let us allow ourselves to be filled with the joy that rises within us as we look upon each other and the world with love and peace.  Let the Divine Oneness of all Creation enter our hearts and minds this Christmas season as we prepare to enter a new year and a new perception of the world around us.

This is the time in which a new year will soon be born from the time of Christ.  I have perfect faith in you to do all that you would accomplish.  Nothing will be lacking, and you will make complete and not destroy.  Say, then, to your brothers and sisters:

  •  I give you to the Holy Spirit as part of myself.
  • I know that you will be released, unless I want to use you to imprison myself.
  • In the name of my freedom I choose your release, because I recognize that we will be released together.

 So will the year begin in joy and freedom.  There is much to do, and we have been long delayed.  Accept the holy instant as this year is born, and take your place, so long left unfulfilled, in the Great Awakening.  Make this year different by making it all the same.  And let all your relationships be made holy for you.  This is our will.  Amen.   T-15.XI.10:1-11

Accept complete freedom for yourself and all others today.  Enter into the awareness of Divine Oneness and communication.  All is healed in this moment and love and peace rise within us to shine brightly for all to share.  Maty you be the light you are this blessed Christmas.

Posted in: ACIM Ch. 15 – The Holy Instant

ACIM T-15.XI Christmas As the End of Sacrifice

December 13, 2016 7:30 pm ⋅

December 13, 2016

By believing our idea that we are separate, we have believed that we must sacrifice something for love and happiness.  Yet, love and happiness are impossible in the presence of sacrifice.  Reality is all about love and peace.  There is nothing in reality besides love and peace.  We are integral with all of reality as we are created.  And the Course teaches us nothing else exists.  If we sacrifice anything at all of love, we deny part of ourselves and who we are.  We have been learning that our true essence is whole, complete and limitless.  We have been learning that the love and peace we seek is within us.  We have been learning that we need not look outside ourselves for anything real for it is already within us waiting for us to recognize its presence within us.  The Course gives us this tip:

Do not try longer to keep apart your thoughts [sacrifice and separation] and the Thought that has been given you.  When they are brought together and perceived where they are, the choice between them is nothing more than a gentle awakening, and as simple as opening your eyes to daylight when you have no more need of sleep.  T-15.XI.1:5-6

The awareness of what we are seeking that is within us is as simple as waking from a dream.

Our true essence is a light that burns without ceasing.  This light shines as brightly as we allow it to be seen.  We may hide it “under a bushel” as we deny it, or let it shine brightly as we accept the reality of who we are.  Lesson 61 in the Workbook of the Couse teaches us, I am the light of the world.  What could be more empowering that this?  Yet we continue to deny the awareness of its power by thoughts of darkness.  We are the light shining in the darkness for all our brothers and sisters to follow out of darkness to the awareness that they are of the same light.  Our brothers and sisters are also the same light that guides us out of darkness into the awareness of the light within us.

The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness.  See it not outside yourself, but shining in the Heaven within, and accept it as the sign the time of Christ has come.  The Christ Spirit comes demanding nothing.  No sacrifice of any kind, of anyone, is asked by The Christ Spirit.  In the Christ’s Presence the whole idea of sacrifice loses all meaning.  For the Christ Spirit is Host to God.  And you need but invite the Christ Spirit in Who is there already, by recognizing that the Christ Spirit’s Host is One, and no thought alien to Oneness can abide with the One there.  Love must be total to give the Christ Spirit welcome, for the Presence of Holiness creates the holiness that surrounds it.  No fear can touch the Host Who cradles God in the time of Christ, for the Host is as holy as the perfect Innocence which the Host protects, and Whose power protects the perfect Innocence – our true Self.   T-15.XI.2:1-9

We are the Christ Spirit in our Oneness as we are created, recognizing our wholeness, completeness and limitlessness.  We have never left the Mind of our Creator as the Mind of the Creator has never left us.  Only the simple mistaken thought that we need sacrifice to get love has blocked the awareness of the total love within us.  The Christmas season symbolizes the awakening to the awareness of this love that is a light eternally shining within us.

This Christmas give the Holy Spirit everything that would hurt you.  Let yourself be healed completely that you may join with Spirit in healing, and let us celebrate our release together by releasing everyone with us.  Leave nothing behind, for release is total, and when you have accepted it with me you will give it with me.  All pain and sacrifice and littleness will disappear in our relationship, which is as innocent as our relationship with our Creator, and as powerful.  Pain will be brought to us and disappear in our presence, and without pain there can be no sacrifice.  And without sacrifice, there love must be.   T-15.XI.3:1-6

Choose to accept your healing now and celebrate our release from sacrifice and fear.  We find love it its place and rejoice in the joy we find there.

Posted in: ACIM Ch. 15 – The Holy Instant, Uncategorized

ACIM T-15.X The Time of Rebirth

December 6, 2016 7:30 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

abstract background withe sea sunriseDecember 6, 2016

We make our lives very complicated in our minds.  It is our complicated perception trying to rationalize all the conflicting perceptions in our minds without seeing the whole picture.  We also tend to look at each situation as unique needing a unique solution or answer to resolve it.  There is only one problem and there is only one solution resting at the base of each situation.  We believe we are separate and thus deny that we are all unified in Oneness.  We then look outside of ourselves to find whatever it is we think we need.  The truth is we have everything we need within us.  Rediscovering that truth is a rebirth to the awareness of who we really are and the one solution we seek.

We are One in the love we are.  We are One in the peace we are.  We find this by looking within us to the truth there.  We also recognize the truth within another as we see the truth about ourselves reflected in that another.  Spirit within us guides our minds if we will allow.  When we release our need to control the world from our perception, we see beyond the appearance of all forms to the truth that lies within each and every one of us no matter what we see, believe and project.  Forgiveness is the release of our rigid misperceptions, granting freedom to ourselves and each other.

You must choose between total freedom and total bondage, for there are no alternatives but these.  You have tried many compromises in the attempt to avoid recognizing the one decision you must make.  And yet it is the recognition of the decision, just as it is, that makes the decision so easy.  Salvation is simple, being of Oneness, and therefore very easy to understand.  Do not try to project it from you and see it outside yourself.  In you are both the question and the answer; the demand for sacrifice and the peace of Oneness.   T-15.X.9:3-8

The one sacrifice we make again and again is the sacrifice of our freedom and our peace of mind.  No more!  Choose again to see differently.  See the real You, One with all creation, and begin to see eternity and the infinite One you are in unity with all others in this creation.  Allow your own rebirth into the reawakening of the Divine One you really are.  Look to the Spirit within and recognize the whole, complete, limitless You full of love and at peace.  All that is not You will simply fade away from your mind.  Choose again and again to be the Oneness we all are.  This is what the season of Christmas symbolizes.

Posted in: ACIM Ch. 15 – The Holy Instant