You are not asked July 14
1. You are not asked to be crucified, which was part of my own teaching contribution. You are merely asked to follow my example in the face of much less extreme temptations to misperceive, and not to accept them falsely as justifications for anger.
2. You are not persecuted, nor was I. You are not asked to repeat my experiences because the Holy Spirit, whom we share, makes this unnecessary. To use my experiences constructively, however, you must still follow my example in how to perceive them.
3. You are not asked to make insane decisions, although you are free to think you are. It must, however, be insane to believe that it is up to you to decide what God’s creations are.
4. The ego’s voice is a hallucination. You cannot expect it to say “I am not real.” Hallucinations are inaccurate perceptions of reality. Yet you are not asked to dispel them alone. You are merely asked to evaluate them in terms of their results to you. If you do not want them on the basis of loss of peace, they will be removed from your mind for you. Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war does deprive you of peace.
5. Do not delay yourselves in your return to peace by wondering how he can fulfill what God has given him to do. Leave that to him who knows. You are not asked to do mighty tasks yourself. You are merely asked to do the little he suggests you do, trusting him only to the small extent of believing that, if he asks it, you can do it. You will see how easily all that he asks can be accomplished.
6. You have made much progress and are really trying to make still more, but there is one thing you have never done; not for one instant have you utterly forgotten the body. It has faded at times from your sight, but it has not yet completely disappeared. You are not asked to let this happen for more than an instant, yet it is in this instant that the miracle of Atonement happens. Afterwards, you will see the body again, but never quite the same. And every instant that you spend without awareness of it gives you a different view of it when you return.
7. Why would you want peace homeless? What do you think that it must dispossess, to dwell with you? What seems to be the cost you are so unwilling to pay? The little barrier of sand still stands between you. Would you reinforce it now? You are not asked to let it go for yourselves alone. Christ asks it of you for himself. He would bring peace to everyone, and how can He do this except through you? Would you let a little bank of sand, a wall of dust, a tiny seeming barrier, stand between your brothers and salvation?
8. All that is asked of you is to make room for truth. You are not asked to make or do what lies beyond your understanding. All you are asked to do is let it in; only to stop your interference with what will happen of itself; simply to recognize again the presence of what you thought you gave away.
9. You are not asked to fight against your wish to murder. But you ARE asked to realize the form it takes conceals the same intent. And it is this you fear, and not the form. What is not love is murder. What is not loving must be an attack. Every illusion is an assault on truth, and every one does violence to the idea of love because it seems to be of equal truth.
10. What can Love ask of you who think that all of this is true? Could He, in justice and in love believe, in your confusion, you have much to give? You are not asked to trust Him far. No further than what you see He offers you, and what you recognize you could not give yourself.
11. Anger is never justified. Attack has no foundation. It is here escape from fear begins, and will be made complete. Here is the real world given in exchange for dreams of terror. For it is on this forgiveness rests, and is but natural. You are not asked to offer pardon where attack is due, and would be justified. For this would mean that you forgive a sin by overlooking what is really there. This is not pardon. For it would assume that, by responding in a way which is not justified, your pardon will become the answer to attack that has been made. And thus is pardon inappropriate, by being granted where is it not due.
12. Some of the ideas the workbook presents you will find hard to believe, and others may seem to be quite startling. This does not matter. You are merely asked to apply the ideas as you are directed to do. You are not asked to judge them at all. You are asked only to use them. It is their use that will give them meaning to you, and will show you that they are true.
13. Our next few lessons make a special point of firming up your willingness to make your weak commitment strong; your scattered goals blend into one intent. You are not asked for total dedication all the time as yet. But you are asked to practice now in order to attain the sense of peace such unified commitment will bestow, if only intermittently. It is experiencing this that makes it sure that you will give your total willingness to following the way the course sets forth.
14. God holds your future as He holds your past and present. They are one to him, and so they should be one to you. Yet in this world, the temporal progression still seems real. And so you are not asked to understand the lack of sequence really found in time. You are but asked to let the future go, and place it in God’s hands. And you will see by your experience that you have laid the past and present in his hands as well, because the past will punish you no more, and future dread will now be meaningless.
Tom Sep 4
from Wenona -
“Sometimes I think Christ does ask us to do and say things that the ego would perceive as insane. The ego often thinks forgiveness is insane. And the ego finds answering a brothers call for love crazy. Also it is true that we are not asked to be crucified but sometimes the ego interprets the circumstances that are designed by God as crucifying to help us heal our minds and return to love as painful although this is not true. But this is all in remembering that it is not the ego that is in charge of the design. Thank you for your study and sharing.”