9,10,,,,,del..1

The art of thought is not possible without a return to the virgin or unaltered self. The practice of the art of thought is what will complete the return begun through the course work in A Course of Love. This will bring about the union of the male and female, of conception and action, of inspiration and manifestation. This is what we have been speaking of when speaking of miracle-mindedness or miracle-readiness. This is wholeheartedness and is achieved through mindfulness.

9.2 Whether you be male or female matters not as you are in truth the union of each. The end of separation that brought about the resurrection, brought about this union, and the separation of male and female continues to exist only in form.

9.3 However, we are talking now, in a certain sense, of an elevation of form. While this is actually an elevation beyond form, it must begin in the reality where you think you are. In other words, it must begin with form. You cannot await some changed state but must create the changed state you await.

9.4 You are used to creating in outward ways. One of the few exceptions to this outward creation is the act of giving birth. But birth, like all outward manifestations, but reflects inner change. The growth of a new being within the womb of another is a visible manifestation of gestation, which is the prelude to resurrection. What was once part of the mother and father, what would have died without the joining that occurred within, becomes new life.
9.5 Now you are asked to carry new life not in the womb but in the united mind and heart.

9.6 Let us consider why birth has been the purview of women and why men have been incapable of giving birth. This is because, in your version of creation, there needed to be a giver and a receiver. You knew that giving and receiving makes one in truth. This is your recreation of this universal truth. You remembered that something does not come from nothing and that nothing is all that exists without relationship.

9.7 You have not remembered that the first union is of mind and heart. The first union is union with the Self. Union with the Self is resurrection or rebirth. All are capable of this life-giving union. All are capable of birthing the Self.

9.8 But what then of the necessary act of giving and receiving? In this birth of the Self, who is the giver and who is the receiver? In order for the Self to be birthed, giving and receiving must be one in truth. Yet it seems there must be one to give and one to receive. You have long waited to receive what you have thought could come only from some other. Your churches are but evidence of this as you seek from religion an intercessor, one to facilitate for you this receiving or communion. Only through the Christ within you does this giving and receiving become one in truth.

9.9 As I awaited my death I was given the gift of knowing what would come to be through my resurrection. This I tried to pass on in the simplest of terms. I tried to make it known that while I would die and resurrect into a new form, you would also. I made it known that this new form would exist within you, that you would become the Body of Christ, and that giving and receiving would be complete.

9.10 You are the Body of Christ.
9.11 What will it mean to bring about the union of the male and female, of conception and action, of inspiration and manifestation? It will mean union and a time of miracles. It will mean that you are the living Body of Christ.

9.12 In the broadest of terms, this is already happening. As the ego has become threatened and allowed the coming of guidance, males and females both have begun to work with the parts of themselves over which the ego has the least control. For males this has most often meant a turning away from the intellectual realm, which was ruled by the ego, to the realm of feelings. For females this has most often meant a turning away from the feeling realm where their egos held most sway, toward the intellectual. This instinctual turning toward an opposite has been made to serve you through the intercession of the Holy Spirit. In turning within rather than without to find what you need to free you from the ego’s reign, you have turned toward wholeness. In the same way that embracing both the male and female attributes within you causes a merging of both and a wholeness to be achieved, so too does a wholeness then come about with conception and action, inspiration and manifestation.

9.13 Lest you fight these ideas as stereotypical, I will give just a few brief examples. These I ask you to cull from your own recent experience. What has caused the ego to become more apparent to you as you have learned this course? Has it not seemed to lie dormant for periods of time and then to suddenly be called back to life through some event or situation? What was this event or situation? Did it not threaten your self-image? And did this threat occur at what you would call the feeling level or at the intellectual level? Were your feelings hurt or your pride? Your feelings called into question or your ideas? And what guise did the ego take as it rallied to your aid? Did it require you to retreat or advance? Did it stir emotions or attempt to still them?
9.14 These may be difficult questions to answer as your initial reaction and your response will likely have taken on different forms. You may for instance, have reacted by being hurt or angry. Your response may then have been either an emotional one or an intellectual one. The point here is that the one that is most comfortable and that is likely your first reaction, is cognizant with your old pattern, or the pattern of the ego. What breaks the ego’s hold will be the second reaction, or the turning away from the old.

9.15 One first reaction might be to puff oneself up with pride, bolster one’s position, think one’s way through, argue, manipulate, or chastise another so that you feel better in relationship to the other in the situation or event. Another’s first reaction might be one of self-pity, of making oneself or another feel guilty, or of experiencing a sense of diminished self-esteem or worthiness. The first will feel like an intellectual position. The second like a feeling position. Turning away from the intellectual position to one of feeling will most readily and quickly solve the first. The second will be most readily and quickly overcome by a turn toward reason or the intellect. The perceived attack will have entered where you have placed your highest value and are most vulnerable. In the past your response would have been to protect and use that which you have most valued. Now your response will have been changing. You will not see so much to value in what has called your ego into action and will turn away from it.

9.16 What “was” is being thrown out and the first step in this is embracing what you heretofore have not embraced. You are pulling forth sides of yourself that were previously undervalued rather than looking for an other to provide what you lack. This is important and universal in its impact. It would seem to be about balance but is about wholeness. Male and female are labels laden with attributes. When the different attributes are merged, male and female will be no more and wholeness will reign.
chapter 10
Peace


10.1 Now let me address the issue of the peace you all have been experiencing as well as your reactions to this peace. It is so foreign to each of you that you can’t quite imagine that it is what you are supposed to be feeling. There is a core of peace at the center of yourself now and the issues that you choose to deal with will not affect that core of peace at all. While you may find this almost disturbing, you will not go to extremes to break this peace.

10.2 My peace is yours. You have asked for it and it has been given to you. To not have it, you will have to choose not to have it. This will be tempting on occasion. You will wonder at the lack of extremes in your feelings and want to bring them back. You will experience this loss of extremes as a lack. You will think something is wrong. You will feel this particularly when others around you experience extremes. A friend is experiencing feelings on an extreme level and this will seem to tell you that this friend is really alive. Whether it be joy or sorrow, it will seem real in a way that peace does not. It will seem so human that a wave of desire to be fully human will wash over you. You will think that this human who has caught your attention is fully engaged and fully experiencing the moment. You will think this is what you want. And I say again that it will not matter whether it be joy or sorrow for you are, or have been, attracted by both for the same reason, the reason of wanting to be fully engaged in the human experience.
10.3 Here is this experience you have created and how often have you been fully engaged in it? How often have you given yourself over to those highs and lows? You will be tempted to give yourself over once again in this most human of ways. You will cry and laugh for the poignancy of the human experience. This is the known that you will be tempted not to give up. If you can’t be moved from your peace by the greatest of these experiences, the most profound sorrow or the most all-encompassing joy, you will feel inhuman. You will think that this cannot be where you are meant to be, what you are meant to feel. You will wonder what is wrong with you.

10.4 This is temptation. The temptation of the human experience. This is what you continue to choose over the Peace of God. This is not a right or wrong choice but it is a choice. It is your free will to continue to make this choice.

10.5 You used your free will to choose the human experience. Now are you willing to use it to choose the Peace of God instead? Can you wholeheartedly choose peace? Can you choose peace long enough to become accustomed to joy without sorrow? If you cannot, you will continue to create hell as well as heaven and will continue the separation between the divine and the human. Is heaven worth enough to you to give up hell?

10.6 These extremes of the human experience have been learning devices. They have cracked open hearts and minds to the divine presence within. You have chosen them for just this reason. But you can now be an observer and look upon them as the learning choices of your brothers and sisters without choosing to return to learning in the same way again. You no longer need these experiences to alert you to the divine presence. Once you have learned to read you do not return to learning to read over and over again even while you may continue to read for a lifetime. You can continue to experience
life and still carry the Peace of God within you. As you live in peace you can be an example to your brothers and sisters, an example that says there is another way.

10.7 Are you being asked to give up extremes? Yes. You are being asked to give up all that would take peace from you. But as you have been told before, you will be giving up nothing. It will seem as if it is so for a while perhaps. You will continue to be attracted to those living at the extremes and there is no reason not to take joy in observing another’s happiness or to feel compassion at another’s suffering. But you need not partake and you cannot partake if you are going to carry the Peace of God within you.

10.8 This is what has been meant by the many references that have been made to God not seeing suffering. God exists with you in peace. When you feel peace, you feel the Peace of God. There is no other peace. There is no other God. Whether you believe it now or not, I assure you, within the Peace of God is all the joy of what you have known as the human experience and none of the sorrow.

10.9 Each of you will have an experience you look back upon, an experience of profound joy or grief that also became an experience of profound learning. You will think that you would not be who you are now without experiences such as this one. You will think that I cannot possibly be asking you to give up these types of experiences. But you have already had them! I ask you not to give them up. Only to make now a new choice.

10.10 It is your memory of these events that hold such sway over you that you would choose not the Peace of God. But look past what you have remembered to what was truly there. No moment of true learning ever arrived without the Peace of God for without the Peace of God no true learning is possible.

10.11 Let us separate experiences you might call peak experiences from experiences of extremes that served as learning devices. Peak experiences often follow occasions of happiness or trauma, but they do not happen within them. Peak experiences are what you can look forward to rather than back upon if you but choose the Peace of God.

10.12 The extremes that we are talking of leaving behind are extremes of reaction to a chosen lesson. What you are being asked to leave behind is the need for such lessons. If you have learned the curriculum, what further lessons are needed? What quiet knowing cannot come to you in peace? Why would you believe you can learn from the turmoil of extremes what you cannot learn in peace eternal?

10.13 This is what you have believed and why you have not chosen to accept your inheritance. Yet let the memory of the truth return to you now and you will see that peace is all you have sought learning to attain. If you do not pause now and accept that it is here, you will not know the Peace of God that is your own Self.

10.14 Peace, in whatever way you find it, in whatever expression it takes, no matter what words you use to describe it, is your answer to God and God’s answer to you. Peace is the inheritance I left you. Peace of body, mind, and heart. Peace is the realm of miracles, the condition of the wholehearted, the prerequisite to the art of thought, the description of heaven, the abode of Christ. Peace has come to you and you to Peace.

10.15 Now your final instruction is here. You who have found peace – live in peace. You who have been given the Peace of God – go in Peace. Spread peace throughout the land. Go out in peace and love and service to all. For in this going out you come home and bring with you all the brothers and sisters you have brought to peace. Go in peace to love and
serve with all your heart. Thus are we one heart, one mind, one unity. Thus are we one in a relationship of love and peace that is our eternal home. Welcome home my brothers and sisters in Christ. Welcome home.