In ACIM there are lessons surrounding the idea that God is my strength. It's a very simple 4-word sentence. But in it you can also see the dynamic of relationship between you and God, in terms of the power that you have.
Specifically, MY strength, IS GOD, AND is myself.
Which means, that within you, there is a strength, which you experience as YOUR strength. But, at the same time, this strength that is in you, could be said to BE God himself. It is not one or the other, it is both.
This is because of the chain of cause effect that happens in creation and extension. When God creates a child he doesn't just deposit a new thing in an environment. He doesn't walk away and leave it alone. He doesn't disconnect from it unbilically.
Instead, He extends himself out and shares himself, RETAINING his thought in his mind, keeping his creation WITHIN his being, and the two are one, shared. Which means that God does not let you go, or disconnect from you, and you effectively don't leave the womb.
Therefore you kind of have God embedded in you still.
Therefore, anything you have, is indeed truly YOURS, because it is fully given to you and fully shared without conditions. But at the same time, it is fully GOD's, because he gives it to you not by losing it but by SHARING it. You overlap and share the same space, and everything there belongs to both of you.
So now the strength you have in you is yours, AND it is God's. The power that is in you, which makes you ALL POWERFUL, is God's power.
It is also not appropriate to suggest that the power that is in you is ONLY God's power. Nor that ONLY God wields that power. Or that only God does anything. This is the flipside of further ego thinking that God and you are separate.
The power that is in you is indeed HIS power, and He is all powerful, as well. But this power IS also yours. And his. At the same time. Together you SHARE the same power.
Power MUST be shared to BE power. It does not belong ONLY to you. But this also doesn't mean it DOESN'T belong to you, ONLY to God.
God has given it to you fully to use AS YOUR OWN, and freely. But only provided that you use it WITH everyone AS everyone. Everyone has the same power because everyone was created BY and WITH power.
It's tricky to understand because our mind wants to separate things off and assign ownership to one and not another. Our power is God's AND ours. We as children of God ARE all powerful. There is nothing WE cannot do. We do it WITH GOD. We AND God are all powerful.
But without God, if you take God out of it, you end up with NO power, because HE has all power. Without him you have NO power. With him, you BOTH have power. Without God you have nothing. With God you have everything.
God AND Christ are all-powerful. Jesus acknowledged God as the source of his own power, giving God FULL credit for the power, because he knew the power did not COME FROM himself. But this did NOT mean that Jesus had NO power, because he had inherited ALL power from God, and so WAS and IS extremely powerful.
"I am not helpless but all powerful."
"YOU did not make this power any more than I did. It was created to BE shared, and therefore cannot be meaningfully perceived as BELONGING to anyone AT THE EXPENSE of another. "
"My Father gives all power unto me"
"Your Will can do all things in me, and then extend to all the world as well through me. There is no limit on Your will. And so all power has been given to Your Son."
"You are part of Him who IS all power and glory, and are therefore as unlimited as He is."
"God has one Son, and he is the resurrection and the life. His will is done because all power is given him in Heaven and on earth."
"To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power."
"All power in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours."
"By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that ALL POWER IS YOURS."
"All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do."
"Knowledge is power, and all power is of God. You who have tried to keep power for yourselves, have lost it. You still HAVE the power, but you have interposed so much between it and your AWARENESS of it, that you cannot use it."
"He understands all power in earth and Heaven belongs to him because of who he is."
"They will always be treasured by God, because they belong to His Beloved Sons who belong to Him. All power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His."
"My mind will always be like yours, because we were created as equals. It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth."
"But the truth is very simple; ALL POWER IS OF GOD. What is NOT of Him has no power to do ANYTHING."
"Sickness is idolatry, because it is the belief that POWER CAN BE TAKEN FROM YOU. But this is impossible, because you are part of God, Who IS all power."
"Your creations ARE the logical outcome of His premises. HIS thinking has established them FOR you. They are therefore THERE, EXACTLY where they belong. They belong to your mind, as part of your identification with HIS. But your state of mind and your recognition of WHAT IS IN YOUR MIND depends, at any given moment, on what you believe ABOUT your mind. Whatever these beliefs may be, they are the premises which will determine WHAT YOU ACCEPT INTO YOUR MINDS."
Jesus talking about the fact that you MUST have your own creations in heaven (and plural), because they are the logical consequence/outcome of GOD's premise. Since he is a creator, and creates in his likeness, YOU MUST be a creator who creates in your likeness and his. Thus you MUST have your own creations in heaven.
"His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father."
"A co-creator with the Father (one or many of his sons) must have a Son*. 2 Yet must this Son have been created like Himself. 3 A perfect being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to add and nothing taken from; not born of size nor place nor time, nor held to limits or uncertainties of any kind."
This is indisputable fact. You have children in reality.
Not only do you have children in Heaven, you also created them WITH YOUR BROTHERS.
"Accept your brother in this world, and accept NOTHING ELSE, for in him you will find your creations, because he created them WITH you. You will never know that you are co-creator with God, until you learn that your brother is a co-creator with YOU."
And because your brother is a CO-CREATOR with you and with God, your brother MUST be a permanent INDIVIDUAL BEING in heaven. You and your brother and God create multiple individual beings in heaven.
"In number infinite" - ACIM
"My self is ruler of the Universe: It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept. For thus am I led past this world to my creations, children of my Will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them, and Him Who has created me."
Reviewig references to "universe", it is clear that not only did God create A universe, that universe is in fact the ONE SON which is the SONSHIP IN HEAVEN. It does not comprise space or time or the contents of the material world, which is a lower-order reality. It is all beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, beyond the earth and all galaxies. It is beyond even space and time.
Many on earth refer to the universe as the container of the galaxies. This is not accurate and is just an earth-bound scientific view. The universe per ACIM is heaven itself, beyond space and time, beyond all form, all planets, solar systems and galaxies. Even beyond spacetime itself, which is part of the belief in separation imposed UPON the universe. And the universe is nothing BUT the Son of God - the creation of heaven and it co-creations, sharing eternal life and having nothing whatsoever to do with planet Earth.
Associating "universe" with "heaven" or sonship is actually a much clearer distinction than the horrendous confusion about the term "world." The universe is heaven, in its original and unseparated condition. In the separation, we MADE space and time, in an attempt to be OUTSIDE the universe/heaven/sonship. This resulted in perception. True perception can reflect heaven's universe, but to be fully IN the universe you have to "leave" spacetime and return to your natural state in God. "To be without a body is to be in your natural state."
"the Lord of Sinlessness conceives us as His Son, a universe of Thought completing Him.""
"My Self is ruler of the universe"
"My Self, Which rules the universe, is but Your Will in perfect union with my own"
"No one but is my brother. I am blessed with oneness with the universe and God, my Father, One Creator of the Whole that is my Self, forever One with me."
"There are no beginnings and no endings in God, Whose Universe is Himself. Can you exclude yourself from the Universe, or from God, Who IS the Universe?"
"The laws of the universe do not permit contradiction. What holds for God holds for you."
"There IS no end to God and His Son, for we ARE the universe."
"every heart throughout the universe forever sings as one"
"For, unless the universe were joined in YOU, it would be APART FROM God, and to be without Him IS to be without meaning."
"The light that joins you shines throughout the universe. "
"See in him God's creation. For in him his Father waits for your acknowledgment that He created YOU as part of Him. Without you, there would be a lack in God, a Heaven incomplete, a Son without a Father. There could be no universe, and no reality."
"for there is nothing in the universe unlike itself" "Think not HE wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him."
"He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that MUST be One"
"Given to HIM, the universe is yours."
"The universe beyond the sun and stars, and all the thoughts of which you can conceive, belong to you."
"Your relationships are with the universe. And this universe, being of God, is far beyond the petty sum of all the separate bodies YOU perceive."
"Today's idea places you in charge of the universe, where you belong because of who you are."
"At one with God and with the universe, we go our way rejoicing, with the thought that God Himself goes everywhere with us." "The universe consists of nothing but the Son of God who calls upon his Father."
"Decide but to accept your rightful place as co-creator of the universe, and all you think you made will disappear."
"The universe within you stands with you together. And Heaven looks with love on what is joined in it, along with its Creator."
"Give him but what he has, remembering God gave Himself to BOTH of you in equal love, that both might share the universe with Him Who chose that love could never be divided and kept separate from what it IS and must forever be."
"You have the right to all the universe; to perfect peace, complete deliverance from ALL effects of sin, and to the life eternal, joyous, and complete in EVERY way, as God appointed for His holy Son."
Each thought system starts with a logical premise, which determines everything that comes from it, which are perfectly logical conclusions. This is true of both God’s creation and the EGO’s world, which are logical outcomes.
The separation from God followed NEAT, LOGICAL steps. The thought system of the ego is run by impeccable logic, just as God’s thought system is. The outcome of each system depends entirely on its logical premise. At the CORE of A Course in Miracle’s metaphysics is PURE LOGIC.
If you can understand the logical premise of each system, and if you can follow the progression of logical conclusions based on that premise - which is IMPECCABLE LOGICAL REASONING, you will correctly understand ALL of the metaphysics of the course. Where everything fits. The TRUTH about the entire separation from God, states of awareness, what is true and false, what is real or unreal, who created what, how the systems MUST function etc.
It is all TOTALLY LOGICAL. If you struggle with logical reasoning you may have difficulty SEEING the logic or following it.
This literally means, that states of mind, states of separation, the making of the body and the world, all of the mechanics of special relationships, sin and death, the nature of the physical universe and its laws, ALL OF IT, is a LOGICAL CONCLUSION. Correctly discerning what the logic IS, HOW it progressed, and WHY that makes SENSE, is the key to accessing the core metaphysics in the course. Once you do this, you can refer to this metaphysics as a cheat-sheet, a reference to TELL YOU, what ANY statement in the course MUST MEAN, where it fits, and what JESUS MEANS. GUARANTEED.
"T-23.II.21. From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos must follow. 2 It is because it follows that it seems to be a LOGICAL CONCLUSION; a valid STEP IN ORDERED THOUGHT. 3 The steps to chaos DO FOLLOW NEATLY from their starting point. 4 Each is a different form in the PROGRESSION of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror and away from truth. 5 Think not one STEP is smaller than another, nor that return from one is easier. 6 The WHOLE DESCENT FROM HEAVEN LIES IN EACH ONE. 7 And WHERE YOUR THINKING STARTS, THERE MUST IT END."
"The ego's LOGIC is as IMPECCABLE as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects."
"The Holy Spirit USES LOGIC as easily and as well AS DOES THE EGO, except that His CONCLUSIONS are not insane. 5 They take a direction EXACTLY OPPOSITE, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. 6 WE HAVE FOLLOWED MUCH OF THE EGO’S LOGIC, and have SEEN ITS LOGICAL CONCLUSIONS. 7 And having seen them, we have realized that they cannot be seen except in illusions, for there alone their seeming CLEARNESS seems to be clearly seen. 8 Let us now turn away from them, and follow the SIMPLE LOGIC BY WHICH THE HOLY SPIRIT TEACHES the SIMPLE CONCLUSIONS that speak for truth, and only truth."
"The Kingdom is the RESULT OF PREMISES, JUST AS THIS WORLD IS. 2 You may have carried THE EGO’S REASONING TO ITS LOGICAL CONCLUSION, which is total confusion about everything. 3 If you really saw this RESULT you could not want it. 4 The only reason you could possibly want any part of it is because you do not see the whole of it. 5 You are willing to look at the ego's PREMISES, but not at THEIR LOGICAL OUTCOME. 6 Is it not possible that you have done the same thing with the premises of God? 7 YOUR CREATIONS ARE THE LOGICAL OUTCOME OF HIS PREMISES. 8 His THINKING has established them for you. 9 They are exactly where they belong. 10 They belong in your mind as part of your identification with His, but your state of mind and your recognition of what is in it depend on what you believe about your mind. 11 Whatever these beliefs may be, they are the PREMISES that will determine what you accept into your mind."
"Look calmly at the LOGICAL CONCLUSION of the ego's thought system and judge whether its offering is really what you want, for this is what it offers you. 2 To obtain this you are willing to attack the Divinity of your brothers, and thus lose sight of yours. 3 And you are willing to keep it hidden, to protect an idol you think will save you from the dangers for which it stands, but which do not exist."
"In one sense the ego's fear of God IS AT LEAST LOGICAL, since the idea of Him does dispel the ego."
Some quotes from A Course in Miracles
"Children do NOT belong to parents, but they DO need to share their greater abundance. If they are deprived, their perception becomes distorted. When this occurs, the whole family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships."
"Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return. The miracle calls to him to return, because it blesses and honors him even though he may be absent in spirit."
"Since you and your neighbor are equal members of the same family, as you perceive both, so will you behave toward both. The way to perceive for Golden Rule behavior is to look out from the perception of your own holiness and perceive the holiness of others."
"God and the Souls He created ARE symbiotically related. They are COMPLETELY dependent on each other. The creation of the Soul itself has already been perfectly accomplished, but the creation BY Souls has not. God created Souls so He could depend on them BECAUSE He created them perfectly. He gave them His peace so they would not be shaken, and would be unable to be deceived. Whenever you are afraid, you ARE deceived. Your mind is NOT serving your Soul. This literally starves the Soul by denying its daily bread. Remember the poem about the Holy Family which crossed your mind last night..."
The things that happen in the world don't really matter. All the efforts to build things, reach goals, assemble cities, improve governments, it's not really the point. It's not why we're here. We're here because we're stubborning refusing to live with God. We have lessons to learn and the purpose is to get to a point where we leave the world permanently. It's not about building a wonderful human civilization on the planet. There is no real benefit to doing that. We're not really supposed to be here. We belong in heaven. This world is just a temporary outpost, a corner in which we're hiding, while we delay being with God. Don't get too comfortable, because it was never meant to last.
"Salvation is no more than a reminder this world is NOT your home; its laws are NOT imposed on you, its values are NOT yours. And nothing that you THINK you see in it is REALLY there at all."
"Yet who can build his home upon a straw, and count on it as shelter from the wind? The body can be made a home like this BECAUSE it lacks foundation in the truth. And yet, BECAUSE it does, it can be seen as NOT your home, but merely as an aid to help you reach the home where God abides."
"The world I see has nothing that I want."
"God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the Face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? No-one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice which its values would demand of him."
"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give."
"I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body's worthlessness to the world."
"The body is hardly worth the least defense."
"The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?"
Get used to this idea. Stop trying to make the world out to be a wonderful great thing that you want to keep forever. It's okay to forgive it and love toward it but in and of itself it is absolutely NOTHING. It is not worth a single thing! All this special-love baloney about how Earth is so special and save the planet and all this bullshit, you're not even supposed to be here.
The body and the world are absolutely worthless. They are not your home, they are not where you belong. God did not create them, and so they are meaningless, valueless, worthless. Putting the body or the world on a pedestal and worshipping it is worshiping false idols. They are not Gods. When you are done with the body and the world you will throw it in the trash and walk away.
The world holds NOTHING that you want. It IS nothing. How can you value nothing? To do so is to completely fail to recognise the world is an illusion. It's not really there to have! You can't keep it, you can't save it, you can't make it mean something it will never mean. You are supposed to forget it entirely and return to heaven. It is VITAL that you recognize the world is nothing. Recognizing this will set you free from suffering.
While we're busy getting excited about all the magical things in the world, all the places you can go, things you can do, stuff you can gawk at, it's all ultimately purposeless until you repurpose it toward awakening FROM it. The world has absolutely nothing to give you, it adds absolutely zilch to God's Kingdom, it doesn't give you any abilities or benefits whatsoever that you didn't already have in spirit, and all it does is limit and take away. Stop making the world into a special relationship. The world is absolutely nothing. There is no world!
"The "self" that needs protection is not real. The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?"
Fact is, we're not even really supposed to be in this world at all. We invented it to try to hide from God, as an attack on God. And we're still hiding. It is not our home and it is not where we belong. Trying to tart it up and make it more comfortable so that you can stay in it forever is not its purpose. Believing that we're here to have a "human civilisation" is bullshit. We've colonised a turd in order to avoid God at all costs.
The world really has no value whatsoever in and of itself, because it is meaningless. It has nothing to offer of any lasting merit. It is like a dark corner where we've rebelled against God and don't want to go home, prodigal sons living in pig shit and refusing to accept that we cannot be happy anywhere other than in God's kingdom. We were not designed to function in this world, the world was designed to make it impossible to escape from problems and from death.
People everywhere are trying to cozy up to it, thinking it is all there is, and the only place to be. Building houses, assembling cities, laying roads, putting up decorations, trying to make it a home. But you can never truly be at home in a world riddled with danger and deception and chaos. This world is like an outpost colony of prisoners who have rebelled against God's kingdom and are trying to tolerate living in a place of suffering and death. It is not where we belong and we're not supposed to be here.
The only purpose the world has is the repurposing that the Holy Spirit has given it, which is solely to use the body and world to learn that we do not want it, and to get out of it. The entire purpose of anything on Earth or in space or time is to use it to expand consciousness so that you can become aware of heaven and leave the world behind.
We're not supposed to be celebrating the success of establishing a civilisation or being all arrogantly triumphant about how great this place is. It is not great. It is absolutely nothing in comparison to God's kingdom. It's like a trash-heap where all you have left is to sift through scraps and leftovers. Nothing lasts, everything dies, everyone suffers, problems are unavoidable, and the world takes way everything it gives. It is merciless and cruel and full of destruction. This is not where you are supposed to be!
"YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love. This GIVES it the only reality it will ever have. ITS value is NOT in itself, but yours IS in you."
"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer. The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it CAN blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true."
"No-one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers his attack upon himself. No-one believes there really was a time when he knew nothing of a body, and could never have conceived this world as real. He would have seen at once that these ideas are one illusion, too ridiculous for anything but to be laughed away. How serious they now appear to be! And no-one can remember when they would have met with laughter and with disbelief. We CAN remember this, if we but look directly at their CAUSE. And we will see the grounds for laughter, NOT a cause for fear. Let us return the dream he gave away unto the dreamer, who perceives the dream as SEPARATE from himself, and done to him."
"Grace is the natural state of every Son of God. When he is NOT in a state of grace he IS out of his natural environment, and does NOT function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment which he has made. He therefore CANNOT adapt to it, nor can he adapt IT to HIM. There is no point in trying. A Son of God is happy ONLY when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make."
"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give."
"You still could not will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is NOT a world of will, because it is governed by the desire to be unlike Him. And this desire IS NOT WILL. The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it."
"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it into another world. Yet the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT. And what you call with love WILL come to you. LOVE ALWAYS ANSWERS, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."
"The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary."
"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."
Nothing belongs to you exclusively. Everything is shared by everyone inclusively. This is the law of God.
"We come in confidence today, aware that what belongs to us in truth is what He gives. And we would wish for nothing else, for nothing else belongs to us in truth."
"what is Yours belongs to me as well"
"As every gift my brothers give is mine, so every gift I give belongs to me."
"We ask no more than what belongs to us in truth."
"everything WE do belongs to you as well"
"God gives WHATEVER belongs to Him, because He gives OF HIMSELF, and EVERYTHING belongs to Him."
"Every loving thought held in ANY part (of the Sonship) belongs to every part."
"Sharing the perfect Love of the Father, the Son must share what belongs to Him, for otherwise He will not know the Father or the Son."
"And EVERYTHING belongs to each of them."
"What is God's BELONGS to everyone, and IS his due."
"The creations of every Son of God are yours, because every creation belongs to everyone, being created for the Sonship as a whole."
You have nothing that is yours alone. Which means you have nothing special or exclusive or just for you. This means you aren't special, have not been granted special favor, and don't have any treasures that belong just to you. This however doesn't mean you have nothing at all, because in fact you share everything with everyone. God's Kingdom is not a place of exclusive ownership. It's kind of like an open buffet. Everyone is welcome, everything is for everyone, everything belongs to everyone, and everyone has simultaneous access to everything. It's completely open and unlimited.
"Nothing real can be increased except by sharing."
God who is complete, cannot add anything to himself. He is already infinite and everywhere. He is kind of like a closed system that way. However, all parts of God host all of God, because every part of God is God. And this means every part of God shares the whole of God. All of God belongs to every part of God, and every part of God is whole.
God can therefore create by sharing himself. He hosts his creations within his own being, literally sharing his own existence. But this requires that anything he creates, must be created to purely and completely share all of himself. Any created being must have full access to everything God has, and must inherit everything from him.
Inheriting from God does not mean you receive a windfall that's exclusively just for you. It's not like winning the lottery. Everything that exists still belongs to God, and is him. But he creates you by allowing you to share everything he has. He gives himself to you in your creation. You inherit God, and inherit everything from God, but God is a co-owner of everything he shares.
"I who am host to God AM worthy of Him."
"When God GAVE Himself to you in your creation, He ESTABLISHED you as host to Him forever."
"And yet, it is your mind that IS the host to Him."
"The mind is then in a state of Grace, and naturally becomes gracious, both to the Host within and the stranger without. By bringing in the stranger, he becomes your brother."
This means that you are created to share everything, and the only way you can exist at all is if you share absolutely everything. God cannot add anything onto the outside of himself, so can only share what is inside of himself. You are hosted by God within his own being, and your entire function must be to share everything openly and fully. Only by sharing it can you have it at all, and you must be willing to give it all in order to have it.
This creates an environment in the Kingdom that we might describe as a totally open society. It's a relationship in which everyone has total full access to everything at all times. Everyone has all of God. Everyone is plugged into God. Everyone has FULL access to everything that exists, simultaneously and in parallel. One being having full access does not deprive any other being any kind of access. Their access overlaps.
"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."
"This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."
You can exist only if God shares everything that exists with you. And now both of you have everything that already exists. And you can only exist if you are willing to fully share everything that exists with everyone else. Which means that no-one anywhere in the Kingdom has anything that anyone else lacks, and no-one lacks anything that anyone else has. Everything belongs to everyone forever.
This also leads to the fact that no-one can have anything that belongs ONLY to them. You have absolutely nothing that is yours alone. The ego begs to differ, because "the ego is the idea of selfishness." It is the part of you that believes in specialness and in exclusivity. It wants to have everything for itself, such that it shares nothing with anyone. The ego is the antithesis of sharing and openness, and wants exclusive rights, ownership and control. It was the desire not to share that led to the separation. "You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it."
What this leads to is the truth that, in and of yourself, by yourself, alone, you have absolutely NOTHING that belongs exclusively to you. Nothing you can put your name tag on, nothing you can say is legally yours, nothing that is just yours and no-one else's. If it seems that you have such things, possessions, toys, clothes, cars, houses, bodies, whatever, which seem to be exclusively "yours", and no-one else's, then you are aligned with the ego.
We need to recognize that in and of our own selves, we can do nothing. We have no life without God. We have no power without God. We have NOTHING without God. You don't even have any existence without God. You have nothing that is personal just to you which is yours alone. Nothing belongs just to you. In effect, you are utterly powerless and tiny and weak and afraid and empty and non-existent if it all boils down to "what is only mine".
"I am nothing without the Father, and YOU are nothing without me because by DENYING the Father you deny YOURSELF."
"The presence of fear is a sure sign that you are trusting in your own strength."
"Here again is the paradox often referred to in the course. To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power. The image you made of yourself has none."
This is where it becomes interesting. You alone, on your own, in isolation, have absolutely NOTHING. That is to say, ignoring God for a moment, ignoring your inheritance, ignoring anything that anyone else has, you actually have absolutely ZERO "for yourself'. Zero that is "of you". Nothing that has been sourced in you, that you have invented, within yourself, which is unshared or belongs to you alone.
That really means that you don't have any kind of special talents or abilities that can be said to "make you unique". You don't have any special "super powers" that others lack. You don't have any exclusive "something", some kind of special secret treasure, that no-one else has. You don't have any possessions that really are yours alone, which is easily proven by the fact that anyone can take them away from you, and they all can be lost, because they were never really yours to begin with.
So you are empty. Without God, you are nothing. Without God you don't even have existence. HOWEVER, you are not without God. If you are willing to go beyond your ego, you in fact regain access to your inheritance. You become once again a member of the Sonship. You open up to receiving your inheritance, which is everything real, in exchange for giving up the NOTHING that you have otherwise. "We will gain EVERYTHING by giving HIM the power and the
glory, and keeping NO illusions of where they are."
"As You created me, I can give up nothing You gave me. What You did not give has no reality. What loss can I anticipate except the loss of fear, and the return of Love into my mind?"
"for the simple willingness to give up nothing, BECAUSE it is nothing" "Is it a sacrifice to give up nothing, and to receive the Love of God forever?"
"Of yourself you can do none of these things."
"Specialness is the function that you gave yourself. It stands for you alone, as self-created, self-maintained, in need of nothing, and unjoined with anything beyond the body. In its eyes, you are a separate universe, with all the power to hold itself complete within itself, with every entry shut against intrusion, and every window barred against the light."
So here are your options. On the one hand you have what the ego is offering, which is absolutely nothing, disguised as something special and rare, something which is exclusive just for you, something special, which makes you important and unique and different. But which really is made of nothing at all, and is not something you can really have, nor can it last forever. And by trying to have it, you may seem to gain the fictional world, and lose your soul.
"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" The alternative on offer, is that you are invited as a guest to join in the Kingdom of God, in which you are allowed to participate openly, freely, and fully. Provided that you are willing to share everything that exists with everyone. And provided you are willing to share your entire self with everyone. And provided you are willing to grant everyone total free access to everything at all times.
And provided you do not in any way attempt to hoard anything for yourself, to have any trace of selfishness, nor to regard anything as belonging ONLY to you. That nothing belongs ONLY to you doesn't mean you have nothing, only that what you HAVE isn't ONLY yours to have and must be shared. You DO have power, but it only so long as you acknowledge that you SHARE this power with God and with everyone. To take it away from them, to have it just for you, is to strip it from yourself and be powerless.
Provided you are willing to enter into a relationship with the whole sonship, where everything belongs to everyone equally, then you can enter the Kingdom of God. To receive your inheritance isn't to receive a big special christmas gift that no-one else gets to play with. All things that are real, that you can actually HAVE, have to belong to everyone. It belongs to God, it belongs to you, AND it belongs to all your brothers. And everyone can access all of it all the time at the same time. "To have all, give all to all."
So you can either have basically nothing for yourself, disguised as receiving the illusory riches of the world, which appear to be valuable bullshit items that you don't even really want, and which have no real value, but which appear to be extremely valuable treasures. Or, you can openly share non-exclusive rights with everyone, to own ALL of the Kingdom of God, ALONG WITH God and with everyone else, in which everything belongs to everyone.
The gifts of God are given in order to "passed forward". He gives you the power to create, so that you can share and give what you have been given. Quite simply, "give what you have been given" is the only rule of the system. Give the love that God has given you. Nothing is ever given to just you alone, it is given FOR everyone.
"The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."
"Healing must be for everyone"
"It MUST be for your brother, BECAUSE it is for you."
"The gifts you have are not for you alone. What He has come to offer you, you now must learn to give. This is the lesson that His giving holds, for He has saved you from the solitude you sought to make, in which to hide from God."
"It will NOT be for you alone, for therein lay its misery."
"Atonement is for all, because it is the way to UNDO the belief that ANYTHING is for you ALONE."
"Would God have created a Voice for you alone? Could you hear His answer EXCEPT as He answers ALL of God's Sons?"
"Salvation IS His Will BECAUSE you share it. NOT for you alone, but for the Self which IS the Son of God."
"The contrast is far greater than you think, for you will love this concept of yourself, BECAUSE IT WAS NOT MADE FOR YOU ALONE."
Quite simply, you either can be utterly powerless, afraid, weak, lacking, deprived, miserable, sick, unhappy, lost, desperate, improverished, bereft, and empty, OR .... you can acknowledge that the ONLY real thing you can HAVE is everything God has given already, and you can ONLY have it IF YOU ARE WILLING TO SHARE IT. Be selfish and end up alone and with nothing, or share with everyone and gain everything there is to have.
You can truly have what EVERYONE has, and only by ackowledging that it belong to them as well, OR you will end up empty handed. To try to take possession of some part of heaven for yourself, all of heaven will slip through your fingers. The more you try to own something, the less you have it. The more you try to depend on yourself alone, the less you become able to deal with life. The more you try to "go it alone", the more helpless you become.
God is your strength! His shared strength is literally YOUR strength. Without God, you have no strength at all. Of yourself you are nothing and have nothing. He is the battery-pack which fuels your power. However, because you are OF GOD, you HAVE EVERYTHING AND ARE EVERYTHING. God's power belongs to you, God's life belongs to you, God's entire creation belongs to you.
Everything real is YOURS. It is not just partly yours, it is FULLY yours. But it is also fully everyone's. You cannot have it by grasping for it to keep it for yourself, you can ONLY have it by acknowledging that it is EVERYONE'S RIGHT. And therefore you have to be open to GIVING IT. You must give what you have received, be open to sharing what you have, and everything must belong to everyone.
To admit that you have nothing SPECIAL about you, is humility. But this does not leave you powerless. It simply leaves you without a SPECIAL power that you invented. It strips you of your "super powers", your fictional sense of personal strength, and your illusion that you can do this ON YOUR OWN. You cannot do ANYTHING on your own. You are helpless and powerless on your own. The ONLY way you can live at all is to join with God and let him help you.
This is why you have to surrender your ego. You simply can't do life by yourself. When you try to you will depend on your own exclusive strength, which is pitiful at best and nothing at worst. And you will not be able to deal with anything. Only WITH God do you have stength. Only WITH God do you have anything at all! But with God, you are ALL POWERFUL. With God, you CAN DO ANYTHING.
"You can do ANYTHING I ask." "The power to work miracles belongs to you." "There is nothing my holiness cannot do." "Do his works." "What the holy spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."
"He brings you gifts that are not of this world, and only he, to whom they have been given, CAN make sure that you receive them. He will place them on YOUR throne, when you make room for him on his."
"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is."
"God gives WHATEVER belongs to Him, because He gives OF HIMSELF, and EVERYTHING belongs to Him."
"The Unity that specialness denies will save them all, for what is One can HAVE no specialness. And EVERYTHING belongs to each of them."
"It knows that it is EVERYWHERE, just as it has EVERYTHING and FOREVER." "No-one who knows that he has everything could seek for limitation, nor COULD he value the body's offerings."
"Being wholly pure, everyone joined in it HAS everything. This is NOT the basis for ANY love relationship in which the ego enters. For EVERY relationship on which the ego embarks IS special."
"No-one who has everything WANTS the ego. Its own maker, then, DOES NOT WANT IT."
"Who would have more OR less is not aware that he has everything."
"Innocence is INCAPABLE of sacrificing anything, because the innocent mind HAS everything and strives only to PROTECT its Wholeness."
"When EVERYONE has EVERYTHING, individual contributions to the Sonship will no longer be necessary."
"Your inheritance can neither be bought NOR sold. There can BE no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole, and all his extensions are like Him."
"Glory is your inheritance, given your Soul by its Creator, that you might EXTEND it."
"Those who witness for me are expressing, through their miracles, that they have abandoned deprivation in favor of the abundance they have learned BELONGS to them."
1. God made the world, you are just a spectator in a body, you change your perceptions about it, you stay in it because it’s God’s creation (Heaven on Earth) and never want to leave. "There is no world" refers to ego perceptions of the world. The world is not believed to be an illusion.
2. God did not make the world, you are not just a spectator but a dreamer who made the world, its forms are your thoughts, your mind is bigger than the world, and beyond the world entirely is ANOTHER world (Heaven) that God created as reality. Earth is just an illusion, bodies aren’t real. There is no world.
I’ve encounted many people now and they always fall into one or the other camp. It always hinges around whether God made the world or not. Whether it’s real or not.
If you believe God made it, automatically all of the rest of what the Course says has to be adjusted to FIT that and is seen as supporting it. Various things are easily read into and seem to add verification of that viewpoint.
Some people have been studying ACIM for 30-40+ years and believe #1 (God made the world) is the ACIM teaching. They value the world, want to keep it, want to see bodies, and attempt to spiritualize it and love it and stay in it. They can’t really help this because the entire model of reality steers you in that direction when the premise is that God created Earth... "and therefore".
I do not believe #1. #1 is "false perception" and believing illusions are real. I believe #2. It is far more radical and difficult to accept. The ideas of God not having created the world are far "bigger" and mind bending. #1 is much safer and "easier" to relate to.
#2 is much more challenging and requires questioning of just about everything you ever assumed was true. That includes assumptions that you are confined to a body, the world outside of you is really there, and that the world "exists" or has happened. These aren’t easy to look at given what that implies. That there is literally no world here.
It means you made the world ("the world you made"), you are pretending to be a little body when in fact you made the whole environment, you are dreaming a universe, Heaven is another realm entirely, and everything you ever thought happened in the world did not happen - not even the world itself. It also then means you have to find a way to SEE beyond this world, to look past the illusion of forms and bodies, and leave this place to go Home to heaven where you belong.