ACIM Lessons- 14 Plus Text with Commentary by David Hoffmeister

David's commentary: "So today we come to the reason why fear is impossible. We've just learned from the previous lesson that 'a meaningless world engenders fear' - but if God did not create a meaningless world, then this is not an effect of God. Christ, as we learned from our text reading today - Christ is an Effect of God: God as Cause, Christ as Effect - this is a true cause-effect relationship, in which no miscreation has been introduced. And yet what we have been discovering about a meaningless world - and meaningless thoughts that seem to produce that meaningless world - this is beginning to see the power of the mind and begin[ning] to see the seat of the miscreation is in the sleeping mind, or the deceived mind. So we are beginning to uncover fear. We are just beginning to see that Jesus cannot take fear away, he can just show us the conditions by which the fear was set up, so that the fear can be removed - seen to be nothing - as we awaken from this dream of fear. We are opening now to see that fear - a miscreation of the ego - must be exposed for what it is, because God did not create it, because perfect Love casts out fear, because there can be no compromise between love and fear or everything and nothing; that we must make our minds ready to choose the Correction. Readiness does not imply mastery, as we learned in the text reading today. Readiness PRECEDES mastery through love (which is accomplishment). And every time we look to these erroneous thoughts of the ego, these meaningless thoughts, or to the meaningless world that is the projection or out-picturing of these meaningless thoughts, whenever we look to those for our peace, our happiness, our salvation, we are looking amiss. Every time we try to handle things in form, believing that will truly handle things, we are tinkering around with meaningless thoughts, and not seeing them as meaningless thoughts. And this is the attempt of mastery through fear. Mastery through meaningless thoughts will never succeed. There is no mastery though education or learning as the world calls learning. There is no mastery through wealth or material possession and accumulation. There is no mastery through possessive relationships: MY husband, MY wife, MY child, MY parents, MY family. As long as there is a 'my' in there and it doesn't include the whole universe, this is an attempt at mastery through fear - and this will not succeed. Who IS my father/mother/sister/brother, but he that does the Will of my Father in Heaven? We have a glorious Purpose called forgiveness that unifies perception, but this perception is far, far beyond the broken, fragmented, distorted, fictitious perception of parts and roles, in which there is a belief that you must fulfill the role - the specific role - to be 'good', to be worthy.

David's commentary continued: "Forgiveness is the Purpose the Holy Spirit has given the world, now. And the Holy Spirit will give the roles and exchange the roles as part of unwinding the mind from this false self-concept. This is the only way. You cannot excel at a role as if there is some meaning or value in the role itself. The roles that the Holy Spirit offers in exchange, one after the next, is in one sense, a stairway to the gates of Heaven, as you take on broader and more open roles which begin to approach forgiveness - the all-encompassing blanket of peace that covers the world, that spreads throughout the world, that embraces and engulfs all tiny little roles, into one experience of unified perception, the quantum field the physicists speak of. And so today, we lay aside all thoughts that induce fear. We lay them on the altar. We give them to the Holy Spirit as gifts. And then we wait in silence, to receive the love and the blessing of the Holy Spirit. We rejoice that today's idea is the reason why the first thirteen lessons we have been doing are true. This lesson, number fourteen, 'God did not create a meaningless world', is the reason why 'Nothing I see means anything', is the reason why 'I have given everything I see all the meaning that it has for me' - and it just goes on and on - it's the reason 'I am never upset for the reason I think', it's the reason why 'I am upset because I see something that is not there', it's the reason why 'I see only the past', it's the reason why my mind is preoccupied with these meaningless thoughts… It's the beautiful cause-effect relationship, as we remember that God creates in Spirit and God creates in Eternity - God does not create linear time and space, God does not create images. This is the meaning of the saying in the Bible: 'Hold no graven images before the Lord thy God'. Why is that true? Why should I not hold graven images before the Lord thy God? Because God did not create a meaningless world - a world of graven images. Graven images - images that seem to exist in and of themselves as parts, as specifics, in a world of linear time and space - this is fiction, this is miscreation. And guilt, and pain, and specifically fear, is associated with this ATTEMPT at miscreation. And why do I emphasize the word 'attempt'? Because, again, God did not create a meaningless world. The ego is nothing more than an ATTEMPT at fear, and why would you identify your holy mind with an ATTEMPT at fear, instead of love, instead of That which God created as perfect, eternal, changeless, divine? And so we go forward today with devotion, with commitment to accept this lesson as the opening of our hearts, as we return to love in awareness. In Truth, we never left, but in awareness, today, we sincerely open to the idea: 'God did not create a meaningless world'."