(Paper #0799-22)

 The CHRIST CHILD is born in all of us as perfect INNOCENCE.  We are created out of LOVE by LOVE.  This is not a happening from a dim, forgotten past, although it seems to be, but is a continual re-birth and re-generation that goes on without beginning or end.

 It seems that we have taken what God creates and have laid layers and layers of darkness over it, until we can almost not remember it ever was there, and still is what it always was.  The CHRIST CHILD still lives in all of us, just as perfect, complete, joyous, innocent and eternal as He ever was.  He is there for us to re-discover and re-unite with just as soon as we choose to do so.

 That CHRIST CHILD is deep within all of us and does not require us to go anywhere or outside of us to find Him.  Once we let all our idols and false gods go, He will be there for us, with nothing left to obscure His innocence, His light and His love.  So, salvation is a choice for us to make when we are ready to let our ego world and thoughts go, and choose once again to be the INNOCENCE that we are.

 Read carefully Lesson 182 in the Workbook of ACIM©, and you may understand a bit better just Who the holy Child in you is.  A few key lines in the Lesson are: -
 "It is this Child in you your Father knows as His Own Son.  It is this Child Who knows His Father."  (L-182.5.1)
 "This Child needs your protection.  He is far from home."  (L-182.6.1)
 "He whispers of His home unceasingly to you.  For He would bring you back with Him, that He Himself might stay, and not return again where He does not belong, and where He lives an outcast in a world of alien thoughts."  (L-182.7.4)

 And so, each time we think we have come into our world again, it is as if we have brought the Christ Child that we are, and keep Him here so that neither of us can return to Where we really live.

 How do we correct this mistaken thought?  WE GET STILL!  And - "When you are still an instant, when the world recedes from you, when valueless ideas cease to have value in your restless mind, then will you hear His Voice."  (L-182.8.1)
"….He was willing to become a little Child that you might learn of Him"…."His home is far away, and He will not return to it alone."  (L-182.9.2)
 And so, as soon as we are willing to see the Child of innocence within us, we can take His hand for our return home.

 All the way through A Course In Miracles© the author calls us "little children."  This is a dual reference since being "a little Child" is our created innocence and our natural condition.  It also refers to our ego mind and thoughts as being nothing at all, even though we may think they are everything.  Therefore, we must "become as little children" before we can recognize our own perfection, which is not of us.

 In ACIM© "child" is used 69 times, upper and lower case.  From these quotes we can see what we must remember to realize their meaning.  It encourages us to become childlike but not childish.  There is a vast difference as we go about defending the childishness of our egos.

 Right from Chapter 1 in the Text, Jesus calls us "Child of God" and advises us that we were "created to create the good, the beautiful and the holy."  This is to extend the love that we are in whatever form is appropriate, as guided by Holy Spirit.

 In our earthly existence, we have built up layer after layer of darkness, self-imagined unworthiness and guilt.  The thicker our layers, the harder it is for us to "see" our own Child.  We must ask the help and guidance of Holy Spirit for us to remove our darknesses and be willing to be empty and open to receive the Peace of God that He is continually extending to us.

 In the very beginning of the Course, we are told, "Child of God, you were created to create the good, the beautiful and the holy.  Do not forget this.  The Love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another, because vision is still so dim."

 If we could actually recognize and be totally within the Child of God within us, we would no longer need to communicate with our brother through bodies and thoughts.  But while we still believe we are here, and this means all of us who walk this world, we must extend God's Love in the only forms available to us.  And so we pay attention to those special ones sent to us to be in our lives, recognize them as "our saviors" simply for being there, and look for the particular lessons for us in those relationship changes from a special one to a holy one.  Such is our purpose here.  "Teach only love, for that is what you are."  The extension of love requires no effort at all as it is our natural and normal condition, once we have removed the "blocks" we have set up to it.  "No child of God can lose this ability because it is inherent in what he is…."  (T2.1.1.6)

 With all the Power of God in us, we can either create a world of beauty as He intended, or mis-create a world of illusion chosen by us.  We have the power.  We can and do make galaxies, universes, worlds, bodies and relationships of our own, as unholy as that may be.  But it is all not without purpose.  We do it so that we may become aware and see the difference between our world of illusion and God's World of Truth.

 Throughout A Course In Miracles©, Jesus' constant message to us is for us to awaken to our own Identity, see the Child that we really are and extend God's Love, which is our created purpose.  We start in small ways with those closest to us.  These are our "miracles", and one is not bigger or smaller, more important or less important than another.  "All expressions of love are maximal."  If we get exasperated, has not God waited a long, long time for each of us to recognize our own Child of Innocence?  Should we not do for others what God does for us?  Everyone has that Child within him just waiting to be discovered.  Hopefully, the world has now developed enough openness and willingness to "see".  Remember, we don't have to do it.  All we have to do is be willing for our Holy Spirit to guide us to that seeing.  For us to try to "do it" will lead us right back into layers of darkness of our own invention.  Our ego just loves to analyze itself, and will "help" us given the slightest opening.

 We are told, "Hear, then, the one answer of the Holy Spirit to all the questions the ego raises: You are a child of God, a priceless part of His Kingdom, which He created as part of Him.  Nothing else exists and only this is real."  (T-6.IV.6.1).  Only the innocent and holy Child of you is real and nothing else exists at all.  No world, no bodies, no thoughts or beliefs, no galaxies, no quasars, no black holes, and nothing else at all outside of the thoughts in the Mind of God, of which YOU are ONE.  When you are ready to "hear" God's Thought, your dream of specialness and all its symbols will be gone, and you will be home, where you never left at all.

 Jesus came into the world to show us the difference.  Truth or illusion.  Reality or the lie.  Heaven or hell.  Life or death.  It was always our choice and simply a matter of where we put our value.  We "died" the instant we thought we separated from our Self as the Christ in Heaven. Therefore, our body and our world are expressions of death in action.

 Our choice was to abandon Heaven, come into a world and take up a body for an experience we decided to have.  No one else decided for us -- it was our choice.  Jesus came into the world to show us what we "had done," and that we could just as well choose to abandon our insanity and be "back Home" to the peace, happiness and innocence that is our natural condition.  He portrayed the Love that he was.  Egos in the world could not stand looking at his love and so had to accuse him and kill him.

 We have all been horrified, intrigued and saddened by the heartless viciousness of that murder on a hilltop in Calvary 2000 years ago.

 But it didn't work.  Although his body was "killed," his Love still remains and comes to us every minute of every hour of every day, when we allow it to do so.  The way we see Jesus' love for us, is to see our's for all our brothers and theirs for us.  To do this we must love ourself first and subsequently all our brothers.  This is what A Course In Miracles© calls FORGIVENESS, being the expression of love here in our world, and is in fact our way Home.

 Jesus came to us to bring us a choice.  It has always been Love or fear: God or the world.

 So, what we are going to do is not open to our choice. That has already been decided.  When we are going to do it is up to us and is called "free will."

 Our spirit mind was given us by God in our original creation.  We made our ego mind as a place from which to think after our perceived separation.  Our ego thought galaxies, universes, world and bodies as manifestations of itself.  However, Holy Spirit has gone with us, lives in our spirit mind, and is the memory of God's Love, ever present in us.  Holy Spirit simply waits in infinite patience for us to ask Him to show us what is true and which is the way Home.

 And so Jesus encourages us to study his "A Course In Miracles©" where all the lessons can be learned and where the "roadmap" is given for our return "home."

 In the short sub-section "The Extension of the Kingdom" from Chapter 7, ACIM© (T7-IX, pp 132) we get a glimpse of what our "creations" are, and recognize that we have already been doing them.  ACIM© tells us that our function in Heaven is to create and that our creations are saved there for us.  But heaven is a state of mind, and whenever we get into that pure state of oneness, we are "in heaven" and able to create.  We can be in this world and yet in the state of heaven, as we experience perfect joining with a brother and the perfect oneness it brings.  In this state, it is as if we have joined, then turned upward together as ONE, left our body and our world and have ascended.  This is what ACIM© means when it says THE WAY back to our SELF in heaven is with and through our brother.

 As we join in that ONENESS of PURE LOVE, we experience a joining which seems to come from the solar-plexus.  It obviates everything else, we become ONE, turn and go upward.  We are still conscious of our bodies, but are no longer in them, our world, space or time.

 In this joining, "Spirit yearns to share its being as its Creator did.  Created by sharing, its will is to create.  It does not wish to contain God, but wills to extend His Being."  (T7-IX:2-8,9&10).  We recognize that that part of us, Spirit, as created by God is God, which MUST join, extend itself, and so create.

 This process begins as a feeling, a desire for only the joining, and then is transformed into a "rising up" and a return to the ONENESS of God.  We realize:-

"Unless you create you ARE unfulfilled, but God does not know unfulfillment and therefore you must create." (T7-IX-3:6)

 Physically and emotionally we know we are totally "full up" with love and nothing else.  Our desire and our action is to bond tightly and completely with our "brother" and so complete ourself in that love.  The joining in spirit occurs as that love joins, turns upwards and ascends.  We have placed ourself completely within love as we rise together.

 This is how we create.  This is how we save the world.  In the recognition of our own complete fullness and the giving of it back to God is how the flow of love is remembered and re-established.  We need do nothing more than let love be and let it flow.  It requires nothing from us as ego.  We need only let God's Love flow through us back to Him as He has appointed it BE.  And that flow is how we create in perfect joy what we truly are.

 Your creations are all the times you allowed the flow of God's Love to be returned through you.  It is that simple and that easy.  It is completely natural and requires nothing whatsoever from us.  Holy Spirit has saved all our "creations" for us because they are the only real things we ever did.

 The secret to remembering creation is in the awareness of total FULLNESS.  We are totally full with pure love and nothing else.  Our only undeniable desire is to join that FULLNESS back to the FULLNESS of God's Kingdom as we join with our brother to the exclusion of all else and experience the "rising up."

 "The creations of every Son of God are yours, since every creation belongs to everyone, being created for the Sonship as a whole."  "AND YOU HAVE DONE SO."  "Your Self-fullness is as boundless as God's.  Like His, It extends forever and in perfect peace.  Its radiance is so intense that It creates in perfect joy, and only the whole can be born of its wholeness." (T-7-IX,6:5.3 to 6.9).

 It is our "creations" that maintain what we truly are and so support us until our total "rising up" is complete.  Each offering of our love is a miracle and part of re-joining with our SELF in the Love of God.  God still waits for His Creations to return to Him, and it is up to us to see that they do.

 Our body is our personification of our ego, and it is in it that we think we "live".  In this "terrible autonomy" we think we have abandoned God, drifted away and are doomed to eternal darkness, forever.  Like Captain Valderdeken, the Flying Dutchman, we have cursed God for our plight, shot the albatross, and are doomed to sail the oceans of the world forever, always in sight of land, but never able to make port.

 It is a lie.  It is not what we are.  We are still and only the created Child of God, Alive and well in His Mind.

 But the lily of forgiveness for ourself can enter our mind, bringing with it the original innocence, peace and love we never left or lost.  As we re-join in that Oneness, we remember what and where we are forever and our ego and our world drift silently off into the nothingness from which they came.

 Grace is the restoration of the flow of God's Love through us and back to Him.  The miracle is the vehicle through which the love flows.  This is the law of love which the world in itself knows not of.  Forgiveness of what we thought was, is the closest we can come to love in our world, and is the home of miracles.

 Belief is what we think is true. Faith is what we intuitively know to be true.  The miracle, taken on faith, will prove that your faith in that miracle was justified as we see its effect.  "Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die.  Now they have water.  Now the world is green.  And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."    (W-13/473/463)

 In this one paragraph am I described and made aware of my true SELF.  When I can understand and accept each sentence, phrase and word completely and perfectly, I have accepted Atonement, and know what I AM.  What I am; not who I am.  "Who" is to put an individual personality on God's One Creation and begin separation all over again.

 Heaven, God and my SELF abide in my holy mind that God created.  It is His home and mine.  Anything else I ever thought or did, does not exist and is not real.  Our single purpose is to join in the ONENESS of that Truth, and let it shine out through us to all our brothers that they may recognize theirs as well.  In the profound holy instant we know we are one with Everything, even though it can't be explained.  It is not a thought or a feeling.  It simply IS, and we know it.

 By sharing what we have found, we are the bringers of salvation.  Through our example, the world sees its way home.  We need do nothing of ourself, simply let God's Love shine out through us.  Those that are ready will see it and join in its recognition and acceptance.

 Our part is to totally FORGIVE everything.  We then welcome the Truth of God as It returns through us to the world, and to everyone He has sent to us.

 Now we know our purpose here, we see the gate of Heaven open before us, we "enter in and disappear into the Heart of God."  The world "is a place whose purpose is to be a home for those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are. AND THEY WILL COME AGAIN until the time Atonement is accepted, and they learn it is impossible to doubt yourself, and not to be aware of what you are." - and we say:- "I will accept Atonement for myself, For I remain as God created me."

 Therefore, our mission is not to "fix up" our illusion, our dream, and make it better, but to recognize the Oneness that we are, by seeing it in all our brothers.  And that is all!  We can not add anything to God's Creation to make it better.  Not a thought, nor an opinion nor a form.

 When we come to realize we are already perfect, complete, holy and eternal just as we are created, we are saved from the necessity to do anything at all except to extend what we are, and return to our SELF as created, in the Peace of God.

 Jesus' instruction to us from God is, "Love one another."  That says it all, is the only message He came to give the world, and the only thing we need do.  It may take many forms, many thoughts, but in the end, is all that is required of us.

 However, the ego that we made to replace God can not understand or accept love; so whenever it see it, it must kill it.  Such is greed, lust, war, jealousy and separation.  No one in this world is free of it no matter how "innocent" they may appear.  It is the death of natural innocence that the ego requires.

 So whether we are killing an "enemy," criticizing a brother for the lesson he has chosen, or cutting pretty flowers to take into our house, we are attempting to placate the insecurity of our ego.  Let it be!  If it were not necessary, it wouldn't be there!

 There are no accidents; and everything is a lesson God would have us learn.  Remember, we chose the lesson but have forgotten choosing them or the reason we thought it necessary.  If we could but remember our Oneness and Completion, we would no longer have to continue to choose lessons to learn it.  Whether we go around the circle once or a million times, we are the chooser, we are the one who must learn, and we the one who must awaken to the Truth of our SELF.  God did not choose the insane search, but he will not interfere as long as we want it.

 One day, we will awaken from our dream and be back to our SELF as part of The Christ, God's One Creation, where He would have us be.  The choice is ours, the time is NOW, and there IS nothing else!

• Previous Paper
• Return to Home
• Index
• Next Paper