Notes on the Text of A Course in - Stephen Wingate

Main Theme: This chapter glorifies the oneness of
God and Heaven, and our oneness with God, the
Holy Spirit, Jesus and all our brothers.
•
Our true reality is in our Identity with God. This is
the light of the Atonement principle to which we are
asked to bring our dark thoughts of separation, sin
and guilt.
•
Our function in Heaven is to create which is to
extend God's love. And our function in the world is
to forgive and heal. In the world we are to turn to
Jesus and the Holy Spirit for guidance and support.
•
In our deluded mind we are able to believe that we
can be outside the law of love, but believing does not
make it true. It is within our power to deny the love
of God, or choose again for the Holy Spirit and God's
love and wholeness.
•
Recognizing God in ourselves and in our brothers
forms the basis of forgiveness. Forgiveness
facilitates the realization of oneness by helping us to
see God in ourselves and our brothers. The
Atonement principle is stated here — there is no
separation of God and His Creation.
•
We join with our brothers through forgiveness and
realizing our shared interest in returning Home
together. This is a reminder that our strength is in our
oneness with God, and our weakness is in separation
from God. When we choose the Holy Spirit as our
teacher we experience peace and joy, when we
choose the ego as our teacher we experience conflict
and pain.
•
The story of the prodigal Son represents the story of
our decision to separate from God, our experience of
sin and guilt for choosing to be separate from Him,
and our fear of returning Home. This story illustrates
a major theme in the Course which is the experience
of sin, guilt and fear in our mind which leads us to
make the world onto which we project our sin, guilt
and fear. But in truth ideas leave not there source
whether we identify with the ego's sin, guilt and fear,
or with the Holy Spirit and God's love, our
projections and creations stay with us — there is no
separation. The ego leads us to believe that ideas do
leave their source and the separation is real.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE JOURNEY BACK
30
•
The "conditions" of truth are peace and forgiveness,
and as we repeatedly turn to the Holy Spirit
throughout our day we are reawakened to the truth of
our oneness with God. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are
symbols that represent guides who help us remember
our Identity as God's Son, and overcome our fear of
loss of our separate egoic identity.
•
Knowledge is the synonym for love, truth, reality
and Heaven. Our motivation for learning this course
is the peace that comes when we are free of all
conflict and pain. The root of all conflict and pain is
the ego's conflict with God. When we have true Self
Knowledge our conflict and pain is released and we
experience our natural state of peace. In our world of
conflict, peace comes through forgiveness. We are
afraid of Self Knowledge, forgiveness and peace
because we are terrified of the loss of our special,
independent existence — which can only exist in self
ignorance, blame and conflict. When we choose to
turn to Jesus and the Holy Spirit they help us
overcome our fear, and experience the love and
peace of God. Forgiveness of those with whom we
believe we are in conflict facilitates the realization of
our oneness with God and our experience of peace.
•
It is the decision maker in your mind that has
freedom of choice, and can decide to lay aside the
ego. And that is the ego's fear.
•
The ego uses the power of the mind to establish its
existence, and then strives to keep us out of the
decision making part of our mind by having us
identify with the body. The ego believes in the power
of attack because it believes its attack on God gave it
separate existence. We then attacked the Voice for
God by rejecting the Holy Spirit's Atonement
principle that does not recognize our individuality,
and we chose to make a body and identify with it and
the ego instead of the Holy Spirit. And as the body
we attack every other body (humans, animals, germs
etc.) that threatens our separate existence as bodies.
Sickness is divided purpose; we are divided within
ourselves. In sickness, minds and bodies are seen as
having separate interests. Healing is unified purpose;
we are unified within ourselves. In healing, minds
and bodies are seen as having shared interests. The
ego's purpose is attack and mindlessness. The Holy