My thoughts* on ACIM Urtext Lesson 160, for June 8, 2024. I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.

I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.

* In Heaven where I know I AM in TRUTH, yes.

* However, that does not mean that my body is not in a place of danger and that my mind is not subject to temptation. The ONLY exception is that within the Atonement I know that it is ALL UNREAL and of no ‘lasting’ consequence.

* I want to listen to this lesson carefully, especially in the USA in 2024 and on behalf of the world that is watching us.

1. Fear is a stranger to the ways of love. ²Identify with fear, and you will be a stranger to yourself. ³And thus you are unknown to you. ⁴What is your Self remains an alien to the part of you which thinks that it is real, but different from yourself. ⁵Who could be sane in such a circumstance? ⁶Who but a madman could believe he is what he is not, and judge against himself?

* THIS is where the ego=god mentality lives.

2. There is a stranger in our midst, who comes from an idea so foreign to the truth he speaks a different language, looks upon a world truth does not know, and understands what truth regards as senseless. ²Stranger yet, he does not recognize to whom he comes, and yet maintains his home belongs to him, while he is alien now who is at home. ³And yet, how easy it would be to say, “This is my home. ⁴Here I belong, and will not leave because a madman says I must.”

* THIS is speaking of our relationship with Heaven. We TRULY could BE ~ NO WHERE ELSE.

3. What reason is there for not saying this? ²What could the reason be except that you had asked this stranger in to take your place, and let you be a stranger to yourself? ³No one would let himself be dispossessed so needlessly, unless he thought there were another home more suited to his tastes.

* Who is the “stranger?” The ego=god image or idol, among many, actually, that we have each created. This ego=god can tear us down or build us up and even pin metals on us and build monuments to our existence. Or so it seems anyway.

4. Who is the stranger? ²Is it fear or you who are unsuited to the home which God provided for His Son? ³Is fear His Own, created in His likeness? ⁴Is it fear that love completes, and is completed by? ⁵There is no home can shelter love and fear. ⁶They cannot coexist. ⁷If you are real, then fear must be illusion. ⁸And if fear is real, then you do not exist at all.

* I can only pray that you recognize that it is fear that does not exist.

* And for those who have thought that the Course was so metaphysical and double levels that you do not EXIST, “⁷If you are real, then fear must be illusion. ⁸And if fear is real, then you do not exist at all.”

5. How simply, then, the question is resolved. ²Who fears has but denied himself and said, “I am the stranger here. ³And so I leave my home to one more like me than myself, and give him all I thought belonged to me.” ⁴Now is he exiled of necessity, not knowing who he is, uncertain of all things but this; that he is not himself, and that his home has been denied to him.

* We appear to have denied our “Birthright.”

* Consider the story of the man who cam in from hunting and ate the stew giving away his birthright to his younger brother, who had been prompted by his mother to have him prepare the stew and offer it to the older brother in exchange for his birthright.

* For those who recognize this story consider how the records that were meant to profess of God’s existence and that of His Son align with what we find here in A Course in Miracles. (It is a Bible story. From the children of Isaac and Rebecca, if I recall correctly.)

6. What does he search for now? ²What can he find? ³A stranger to himself can find no home wherever he may look, for he has made return impossible. ⁴His way is lost, except a miracle will search him out and show him that he is no stranger now. ⁵The miracle will come. ⁶For in his home his Self remains. ⁷It asked no stranger in, and took no alien thought to be Itself. ⁸And It will call Its Own unto Itself in recognition of what is Its Own.

* THAT section describes what the miracle is needed for, why it really is not real because a miracle is not needed, and how we are each still in Heaven where we have NEVER LEFT.

7. Who is the stranger? ²Is he not the one your Self calls not? ³You are unable now to recognize this stranger in your midst, for you have given him your rightful place. ⁴Yet is your Self as certain of Its Own as God is of His Son. ⁵He cannot be confused about creation. ⁶He is sure of what belongs to Him. ⁷No stranger can be interposed between His knowledge and His Son’s reality. ⁸He does not know of strangers. ⁹He is certain of His Son.

* I am currently reading Kristi Noem’s “No Going Back” and am just starting on Chapter 6. I had to pause a bit ago and write this inside the cover:

* The government is currently being run in the same way that the Son of God, who thinks he has left Heaven and God, leads his ‘life.’

* Through the ‘imaginary’ ego=god figurehead (which actually may only be two or three, or even only one) but because we have turned over our own ‘governing’ or ‘thinking’ for ourselves to a ~ non-revealing or non-seen entity.

* The term “alien” is used in this lesson. Alien itself has many different meanings in society’s mind today. That is something to take into consideration, for each may have its place in the stories that we have told ourselves.

* It could be the ‘original manifester of the original thought that separation from God might be a possibility.’ I think of this as Jesus’ original manifestation. Who just might be the ‘Lilith’ we have heard of through the ages.

* The possibilities are endless and as I said, we each have our personal ‘storyline’ and any number of them may be correct because it is all ‘untrue’ since we have never actually left Heaven in the first place.

8. God’s certainty suffices. ²Whom He knows to be His Son belongs where He has set His Son forever. ³He has answered you who ask, “Who is the stranger?” ⁴Hear His Voice assure you, quietly and sure, that you are not a stranger to your Father, nor is your Creator (*this means your Creator is not made a stranger to you, this shows how those who maintain our language can use it to manipulate and cause confusion and enhance the feeling of separation) stranger made to you. ⁵Whom God has joined remain forever one, at home in Him, no stranger to Himself.

* Religion gave this “remaining forever one” truth over to sexual partners only. I doubt that this was EVER the intention that God had for it BECAUSE that again would be a form of separation thinking instead of the Oneness that we are. Not that we cannot or do not manifest in various forms. Some have even played around with the idea of ‘shapeshifters.’ Would that really be so out of the question for the Mind and Will of God or His Son?

9. Today we offer thanks that Christ has come to search the world for what belongs to Him. ²His vision sees no strangers, but beholds His Own (* Not only His Own but specifically Himself!) and joyously unites with them. ³They see Him as a stranger, for they do not recognize themselves. ⁴Yet as they give Him welcome, they remember. ⁵And He leads them gently home again, where they belong.

* Absolutely! I finally got there and you may as well!

10. Not one does Christ forget.

* Because NO ONE IS NOT CHRIST.

²Not one He fails to give you to remember, that your home may be complete and perfect as it was established.

³He has not forgotten you.

* Who is Himself.

⁴But you will not remember Him until you look on all as He does.

* As Christ, even as you ARE.

⁵Who denies his brother is denying Him (*Christ), and thus refusing to accept the gift of sight by which his Self is clearly recognized, his home remembered and salvation come.

* In other words, you will not be able to recognize yourself as part of the Body of Christ until you recognize this of everyone else, including who you may have, in the past, thought of as your enemies.

(ACIM, W-160.1:1–10:5)

Till next time, God bless, debi.